THE SUMMER OF LIFE

 

My elementary School: Grade 1 to 7. The Espiritu Santo Parochial School was formally established in 1947 by Rev. Fr. William J. Duschak, SVD, former Vicar Apostolic of Calapan, Oriental Mindoro. Initially, classes were held in the parish hall. Due to the unprecedented increase in student enrolment, the high school department, the Annex 1 and the Annex II buildings were constructed in succession. The following years, Fr. Antonio Albrecht, SVD, the Holy Spirit Sisters and the Secular Clergy efficiently administered the operation of the school. In 1973, the Religious Missionaries of St. Dominic took over its management. Our song E.S.P.S. all praise to thee Glad the song we raise to thee. Down the years we’ll love thy name Thy renown we’ll all acclaim.Thy love and truth will ever be Stars to guide our loyalty A light to shine . . . . on life’s high sea Alma Mater ESPS. Sons and daughters sing to thee, Worthy gifts we bring to thee.Hearts we give thee loyal truth To those rare gifts we owe to you. My High School: UP Prep was a unique high school created in 1954, when the UP Board of Regents authorized then UP President Vidal Tan to open a first class high school in Manila. The school’s high standard curriculum was designed for secondary school graduates with the aptitudes and intellectual talents for university level education. The faculty was carefully selected for these advanced subjects. Only by passing a battery of rigorous examinations could a student get in, and once accepted, he or she had to hurdle to pass each of the four tough years of the highest standard of education ever given to high school students in the Philippines before one could graduate. In 1973, after graduating 20 classes — comprised altogether of 1500 graduates — UP Prep was merged with UP High School to later become what is now known as UP Integrated High School. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXqgO63b59c&feature=related 1960: At UP Los Banos with mom and siblings, me in uniform of UP Prep High, khaki pants and white top with logo on left breast. (Photo by papa UPLB BS Forestry class'40). It was a rare event when we all could gather and pose for a moment. They are grown up, mother have left our midst. The glimpse of all of us together brings the emotions of close family ties. Our UP Diliman Campus early 1960 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVlGYhdjj9c&feature=related Tech-Savvy Presidential Candidates: John F. Kennedy Medium: Television The first televised debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon in September 1960 demonstrated Kennedy's mastery of the medium. While Nixon declined make-up and looked tired and wan, JFK wore television-friendly clothes, made up his face, and took coaching on how to talk and sit for the camera. In my albums, I always portray the nations at war. I want to emphasize that a group of individuals are profiting..WHERE THERE'S WAR THERE'S MONEY . War uses up more materials more quickly than most anything else on earth. In war expensive equipment doesn't wear out slowly, it gets blown up. (It's interesting to note that during the 119 year period from the founding of the Bank of England to Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, England had been at war for 56 years, while the rest of the time preparing for it. In the process the money changers had been getting rich.) So there it was, the newly formed Federal Reserve poised to produce any money the U.S. Government might need from thin air with each dollar standing to make a healthy interest. Same with Iraq War! Photo portrays happy times of the Kennedy Administration John F. Kennedy Speech, April 27, 1961 American Newspaper Publishers Association. In a speech that should shock Americans. He warns the press and America to be on the lookout for the exact circumstances that have manifest themselves under the Bush Administration and the false flag of state sponsored terrorism. This speech should chill Americans. Kennedy died trying to warn us. He wanted to abolish the Federal Reserve and the C.I.A. On November 22, 1963, hardly past his first thousand days in office, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was killed by mutiple assassin's bullets as his motorcade took and unscheduled turn in Dallas. Kennedy was the youngest man elected President; and youngest to die. The Secret Service was not by his side, they had been called off of his motorcade. Who would have the power to do this? This speech which has now transended time could be the key to saving America from the fate which looms over it like a dark spectre. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=642552841321950688&q=kennedy# The hatred of the Texas Republican party, mostly represented by the conservative oil industry came up with a handbill circulated on November 21, 1963 In Dallas, Texas, one day before the assassination of John F. Kennedy. On November 21st, 1963, 47 years ago today, the 1,035th day of John F. Kennedy's tenure as President, he asked the Congress for $95.7 million in supplemental appropriations for fiscal year 1964. He also asked his economic advisers to prepare a "War on Poverty" program for 1964. Then, President Kennedy and Mrs. Kennedy departed for a two-day trip to Texas. It was to be his last full day on Earth. President and Mrs. John F. Kennedy smile at the crowds lining their motorcade route in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. Minutes later the President was assassinated as his car passed through Dealey Plaza. November 22, 1963 Dallas, Texas, USA President Kennedy opposed the industrial military complex and the "Federal" Reserve System. In 1963, it cost him his life. On June 4, 1963, a little known attempt was made to strip the Federal Reserve Bank of its power to loan money to the government at interest. On that day President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order No. 11110 that returned to the U.S. government the power to issue currency, without going through the Federal Reserve. Mr. Kennedy's order gave the Treasury the power "to issue silver certificates against any silver bullion, silver, or standard silver dollars in the Treasury." This meant that for every ounce of silver in the U.S. Treasury's vault, the government could introduce new money into circulation. In all, Kennedy brought nearly $4.3 billion in U.S. notes into circulation. The ramifications of this bill are enormous.Soon after President Kennedy's assassination, President Johnson debased the coinage by removing ALL the silver from the silver coins. Anderson’s papers contain information on George H. W. Bush’s role in Dallas in November 1963. Dubya ordered papers seized and withheld as “classified” U.S. government documents. It is clear that the man standing in front of the Texas School Book Depository and his son have much to be worried about. The FBI also wanted to remove from future public circulation Anderson documents that point to George H. W. Bush conspiring with the government of the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran to keep U.S. hostages imprisoned in Iran until after the 1980 presidential election and avoid an “October Surprise” for Carter. The agreement between the Iranians and Bush (who was working with William Casey) sank the chances for Jimmy Carter’s re-election and George H. W. Bush’s entry into the White House as Vice President. The hostages were released at the very time Ronald Reagan took the oath of office in 1981. That operation would lay the ground for future Bush-Tehran collusion in the Iran-Contra scandal. 1964 August 10 - False Flag President Lyndon Johnson signs Resolution 1145, “To any in southeast Asia who ask our help in defending their freedom, we shall give it. … This resolution stands squarely within the four corners of the Constitution of the United States. It is clearly consistent with the principles and purposes of the Charter of the United Nations. And millions of dead later… In fact Ho Chi Minh had asked the U.S. for help in dislodging the French occupation of his country, but since the U.S. was courting the French to join NATO, we took the side of the French colonialists, and gave them arms and equipment to subdue the Vietnamese (rec. by J.F.Dulles a big banker). President Lyndon Johnson Jan. 31, 1966, announcing the resumption of bombing of targets in North Vietnam. The president, who was photographed from a television screen at the New York studios of NBC-TV, said he was requesting Amb. Arthur Goldberg to call for an immediate meeting of the U.N. Security Council. (AP Photo/Marty Lederhandler) View of the Anti-Vietnam war demonstration held in Trafalgar Square, London, on March 17,1968. (AP Photo) Although different in its basic urges, the growth of the new youth culture's open hostility to the values of the middle-class society, the counterculture was formed. America became more aware of its young generation. Through protests, riots, and anti-war demonstrations, they challenged the very structure of American society, and spoke out for what they believed in. From the days of Woodstock to today, our fashion today reflects the trends set in Woodstock. Trends such as; long hair, rock and folk music used as a form of expression for radical ideas, tye-dye, and self expression. While these trends are non harmful, others are; such as the extended use of marijuana, and the hallucinogen, LSD, which are still popular with the youth today. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcEXZcv2Q-c&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHfaXuFE2fU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBoW_kGCxBk&feature=related Dr. Martin Luther King, leads a crowd of 125,000 Vietnam War protesters in front of the United Nations in New York on April 15, 1967, as he voices a repeated demand to Stop the bombing. The largest anti-war demonstration in history was held when 250,000 people marched from the Capitol to the Washington Monument, once again, showing the unity of youth. This was the speech that marked MLK for asassination. We could reflect the vision of this speech to the present wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Wars that displaced the poor(AP Photo) All we are asking is give peace a chance, was chanted throughout protests, and anti-war demonstrations. Timothy Leary's famous phrase, Tune in, turn on, and drop out! America's youth was changing rapidly. Never before had the younger generation been so outspoken. 50,000 flower children and hippies traveled to San Francisco for the Summer of Love, with the Beatles' hit song, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band as their light in the dark. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOO8-Jp-xsg Martin Luther King Jr (left) and Robert F Kennedy (right) When the late, Robert F. Kennedy, signed the J. Edgar Hoover/FBI document unknowingly granting his consent as attorney general, for the agency to spy on, harass and terrorize the late, great Martin Luther King Jr., he was essentially signing the civil rights leader's death warrant. The FBI even sent King a suicide note, urging him to kill himself. The FBI/DOJ's violation of King's rights went on for years, to the day he was murdered. FBI agents, scholars and analysts, have since come forward claiming there was an FBI conspiracy to kill King, with the assassination executed by a commissioned killer. Supporters of the Vietnam moratorium lie in the Sheep Meadow of New York's Central Park Nov. 14, 1969 as hundreds of black and white balloons float skyward. A spokesman for the moratorium committee said the black balloons represented Americans who died in Vietnam under the Nixon administration, and the white balloons symbolized the number of Americans who would die if the war continued. (AP Photo/J. Spencer Jones) Inside the walls of Intramuros, The location of MIT.One of the seven Gates. The construction of Intramuros started in 1571 by Miguel Lopez de Legaspi, a Spaniard. The walled city covers an area of about 160 acres. Intramuros was a fortress city with walls 6 metres high and a commanding 3 kilometres in length, it is no wonder it was impenetrable. Only the Spanish elite and Mestizos (mixed race) were permitted to live inside Intramuros, where at night the city gates were locked down. The natives and Chinese were not permitted to live inside the walled fortress and were resigned to live outside the great walls of Intramuros. Intramuros was designed with 51 blocks within the vast walls, the only access in or out of Intramuros was via seven fortified gates. A moat around the walled city was added in 1603. Spread throughout the 51 blocks of the city were 12 churches, hospitals, domestic accommodation, military barracks, Governors Palace and schools. Seen here are pickets demonstrating against the Vietnam War as they march through downtown Philadelphia, Pa, March, 26 1966. (AP Photo/Bill Ingraham) Everyone took a toke – and much to my amazement – no one seemed to care. At the start of the march I saw every type of person imaginable. Not just the long-haired hippies and students that I expected, but Quakers, Orthodox Jews, average-looking working-class types, well-dressed business people, and families with young kids. There were people of all ages – some even looked like my parents. We were all there with a unity of purpose, and we marched together through the city, holding hands and chanting: “No more war! No more war! No more war!” A poignant oblation photo. My interpretation of my last look and parting with "UPPHS". "Paalam" Prep High Most memorable song of the period. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3Cb2mqDRR0&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s3WAULJN5A&feature=related 1960: I became aware of my family's heritage at UP Prep and began preparation for entry at Fort Del Pilar (PMA), a military academy in Bagiuo named after my granduncle. A period in my teen years in High School that I remember fondly, of the hectic days, dashing thru the corridors catching my schedule of classes at Rizal Hall. I recall my bag loaded with books, eager, wide eyed, and quick to learn the tenets of math, and the sciences. I remember past friends and stormy situations that most teenagers weathered through. As in life surviving the unspoken pecking order of bigger classmates and the so called in crowd was the rule. That lone wolf streak that kept me apart, which peers seemed to see as a weakness was a measure of heritage that set me off from the current teenage precepts of the day. Later, when of age after further studies, having ever spurred curiosity, like my ancestors did, aspired a life of adventure, of soldiering and foreign lands. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAUHglnkdjc&feature=related What smoking does to the aging process, from that innocent looking teener at the start of the 60's to this mature fellow in 5 years. I took a fancy, and hooked on cigarettes in the next nine years, starting sometime in my junior year in High School, until quitting at age 26. If I can go back in time, I wished I followed my elders advice not to imitate the macho image, with that burning appendage of a smoke stack hanging from my lips.Smokers beware, you will look older than your age,and die an earlier painfull death to boot!! College and High School Environs. Stomping grounds from 1957 to 1966. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEUDrTevfiE&feature=related This was taken in 1963 on top of the FEU bldg. to commemorate the new Philippine Institute of Chemical Engineering Students (PICHES) then, I was a junior and the seniors like Mely Calueng and Bobby Castro are sitted at the middle. Alwayne Carino is far left, then me, the rest like Alcaraz, Mitz are the only ones I recognized from this badly focused monochrome................Alexander http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrUfPGNX9AQ&feature=related Manila 1960: Plaza Lawton at the center, Intramuros to the right, Quiapo, McArthur, Jones Bridge. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l54HZfSoBmw&feature=related Mapua and Lyceum College extreme upper left. A City Hall the dominant motif (remember that the pre-war City Hall was almost razed to the ground)…this tower-like building will command views of Manila Bay, the Botanical Gardens, the surrounding districts of Manila, including the mountains of Cavite, Corregidor, Mariveles and Bataan, Banahaw, and Makiling.” The air in Manila back then must have really been pollution-free for these views to be possible Early 1960: Intramuros to your left, Post Office in distance, Manila City Hall on the right. Agripina Circle, my stomping grounds from 1957 to 1966 April 1966: Here's another photo I found from our Baguio field trip - circa 1966. My guess is from L to R, top to bottom: Ben Asis, Lando Castillo, Nato Dimayuga, Merle Briones, Sheila Tempongko, Meny Reyes Banares, Lilia Antonio, Tony Alialy, Me, Pedro Palermo, Rosalina Dirige Corbett, Leonila Coronel, Fe Gana & Rhodora Sarmiento.......................Oscar H Sheila Tempongko Obedoza:UP High 61........May you have enough happiness to make you sweet, enough trials to make you strong, enough sorrow to keep you human, enough hope to make you happy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KODZtjOIPg&feature=related My textbooks and Lessons Learned....Chemical Engineering bible, saved me in my exams. Many of my books were borrowed from the goodness of my neighbor then Melba Vives Claridge. Besides the textbooks, the important lesson learned; make do with what you have, trully it is how you play the cards that you’ve been dealt that matters most. Sept. 1966: The Brothers Alpha Phi Omega (APO) Fraternity of the Delta Chapter Philippines circa 1966, from L # 3 - kneeling, me, my back Cesar Frias ChE68, 4-kneeling, Warlito Boquiren ChE66, his back, Jose Catibog ChE66, Advisor Prof. Sevilla and daughter. Standing on the far left the brother of Rosalina Corbett. More than 350,000 members have joined Alpha Phi Omega National Service Fraternity since it's founding, at 366 college campuses here in the US alone, not counting other countries. Our mission is to prepare campus and community leaders through service. Our purpose is to develop leadership, to promote friendship and to provide service to humanity....... The Brothers ...... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXZELaNPnaI .........Alexander Seated: 1-Alex Custodio, 3(back) Oliver Masil, 4-Alwayne Carino, 5-Jes Bustria, 7(back) Rudy Jose, 9(back) Romy Reyes ;Standing: 1-Rick, 2-Beda Bera, 3(back) Rene Rivera, 4-Greg Alcaraz, 5-Leon Delos Santos, 7-Ismael, 8-?, 9-Eddie Antonio,10-Mike Bernardino Jess Bustria...My partner in crime; Our Thesis Carbonization of Coco Shells under Prof. Jaranilla..My latest pictures taken by Meny... http://share.shutterfly.com/share/received/welcome.sfly?fid=e86e79aa804dd988&sid=0AZOG7Zm4bN2TrQ Ayala Ave Makati: Sarmiento Bldg. (Curvilinear windows) where I used to work at Procter and Gamble PMC on your middle right. The company (PMC) unfortunately left the Philippines for Thailand, where the business climate has a favorable reception than the corrupt government of Manila. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnDm3qr1Knk During spring of 1967, just before the Summer of Love, thousands of Americans flocked to San Francisco, the epicenter of the hippie movement that challenged everything that was understood about the world. Psychoactive drugs, creative expression, revolutionary music and political ideals swept the nation. Long-haired flower children spoke of free love, peace and the necessity of exploring realms of consciousness. People questioned the policies of the generations before them and demanded change. One thing that brought hippies together was music. It was during the hippie era that rock concerts became the megaevents that they are to this day. But there were big differences. For one thing, rock in the 1960's and 70's focused exclusively on the music; choreography was non-existent. In this day of emaciated females gyrating across gargantuan stadium stages, it's easy to forget that Jerry Garcia and his friends could attract huge crowds just by standing on stage and playing.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKeXkhxiq6I Paratroopers of the U.S. 2nd Battalion, 173rd Airborne Brigade hold their automatic weapons above water as they cross a river in the rain during a search for Viet Cong positions in the jungle area of Ben Cat, South Vietnam, Sept. 25,1965. The paratroopers had been searching the area for 12 days with no enemy contact. (AP Photo/Henri Huet) Anti-war demonstrators gather opposite the Lincoln Memorial in Washington , D.C. In the background is the Reflecting Pool, the base of the Washington Monument, and barely visible through the haze is the Capitol Building. (AP Photo) For me, San Francisco was a magical place that I heard of only through rumor. Friends, or friends of friends, would return to our small, conservative Fort Bonifacio enclave with their stories about the happening and from my cousins, who lived in the hills of Marin County, of the Haight-Ashbury, flower children. Immigrating to San Francisco, was first in my mind and it could offer a chance for a new beginning, to be completely independent, and an opportunity to witness firsthand the peace and love movement that was sweeping America. A napalm strike erupts in a fireball near U.S. troops on patrol in South Vietnam, 1966 during the Vietnam War. (AP Photo) In May 1967, Israel responded to escalating violence by massing troops on the Syrian border. Egyptian president Gamal Abdal Nasser reacted aggressively blockaded the Red Sea Strait of Tiran, a crucial Israeli shipping lane and entered into a military pact with Jordan. Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait and Algeria promised to "wipe Israel off the map" if it retaliated. Fearing an invasion, Israel launched a surprise attack. On June 5 it destroyed the Egyptian air force, the strongest Arab fighting unit, and then continued to trounce Egyptian ground forces and occupy the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula. Jordan entered the war as well, but was also vanquished. Israel captured all Jordanian territory west of the Jordan River -- the West Bank. Then Israel drove Syria out of the Golan Heights. The UN brokered a cease-fire on June 11, but the stage had been set for future violence. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syUSmEbGLs4&feature=fvw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IuHgBQcbKs&feature=related In 1967, the simmering Arab-Israeli hostilities exploded into brief, climatic war when Israel , assailed by Palestinian guerrillas, launched a massive punitive strike against Egypt, the Arab world’s leading state. Although the Six Day War was a result of Egyptian provocation, conflict was a fact of Middle Eastern life since 1947, when Palestine was partitioned to make room for a Jewish state. After a decisive military victory in 1967, Israel annexed (took over) substantial Arab territory, ensuring continued violence right to the end of the century http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7fB06S8Bq8 Sept. 1966: The Brothers Alpha Phi Omega (APO) Fraternity of the Delta Chapter Philippines circa 1966, from L# 1 Renato Perez, L #2 Virgilio Macalinao, L#3 - kneeling, me , 4-kneeling, Warlito Boquiren ChE66, L#5 Johnny Lee, ?,L#7 Roberto Sobrepena, L#8 hidden halfway Camilo Assuncion Standing on the far left Derige (the brother of Rosalina Corbet, Mario Templado, Rolly Calumpong, Joe Calvo, Cesar Frias, Jojie Catibog, ?, Advisor Prof. Sevilla and daughter, Bonni Tong, Alex Tiquia, Jonah Molina. More than 350,000 members have joined Alpha Phi Omega National Service Fraternity since it's founding, at 366 college campuses here in the US alone, not counting other countries. Our mission is to prepare campus and community leaders through service. Our purpose is to develop leadership, to promote friendship and to provide service to humanity....... The Brothers ...... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM6sWPH7go0&feature=related .........ASC The Philippine Peso of that era. The exchange rate was 3 pesos to the dollar towards the end of the decade. The Boys of MIT ChE Class 66 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Jj3wZVc7nw&feature=BF&list=MLGxdCwVVULXePCv2EXWw6UL9txR5GxyCz&index=2 "The Sixties was a decade of "Liberation"and "Revolution", a time of personal journeys and fiery protests. It transcended all national borders and changed the world. People, young and old, united in opposition to the existing dictates of society. We were living in fear: fear of the bomb, fear of sex, fear of communism, and fear of our own governments. We wanted to break free. The 60's were the result of that breakthrough.The Sixties embodied a spirit of self-awareness and introspection. We sought truth, demanded justice, and found freedom in self-expression. We rejected the restrictions of a puritanical lifestyle. We sought out and embraced new philosophies. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI-Ji4gtBPM With a country in shambles, as a result of the Vietnam War, thousands of young men and women took their stand through rallies, protests, and concerts. A large number of young Americans opposed the war in Vietnam. With the common feeling of anti-war, thousands of youths united as one. This new culture of opposition spread like wild fire with alternate lifestyles blossoming, people coming together and reviving their communal efforts, demonstrated in the Woodstock Art and Music Festival. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRJ7pmif9Dc&feature=related We wanted to see life without violence. We wanted media that contained truth. Some of us risked our lives to find out what the government was doing and let the underground press know. We wanted to talk about things in print that we were not allowed to discuss in our culture of origin. We wanted to live without stupid, arbitrary rules, either for ourselves or for our children. Some of our children, as adults today, say they wish we had been more protective of them, or offered more structure.It was a moment in history when a mushroom explosion of consciousness began altering the life force. Through that explosion, we broke down the prison walls of "intellect as the ultimate". We focused on the heart, and by doing so, reopened our cookie jar of possibilities·politically, socially, sexually and spiritually. The effects of that explosion have permeated our culture. We, as a generation, have a responsibility to see that the 60's are remembered in the context in which they unfolded." The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that began in the United States during the early 1960s and spread around the world. The word hippie derives from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district. These people inherited the countercultural values of the Beat Generation, created their own communities, listened to psychedelic rock, embraced the sexual revolution, and used drugs such as cannabis and LSD to explore alternative states of consciousness. In January 1967, the Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco popularized hippie culture, leading to the legendary Summer of Love on the West Coast of the United States, and the 1969 Woodstock Festival on the East Coast. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqoO_CqS2YY&feature=related We wanted to live in harmony with the earth, the plants and animals, the indigenous peoples of the earth,with each other, with ourselves. We were the fuel behind the rapid expansion of the environmental movement. We experimented with living arrangements that we thought would harmonize with nature. We sought out indigenous tribal elders as our teachers. We wanted to make the things we wore and used with our hands, grow our food and medicine, feel all kinds of weather--all the experiences our modern urban lives had excluded in the name of convenience and comfort. We wanted to live on the road, have adventures, build things that hadn't been built before, and live in them. We wanted to live our mythic selves,give ourselves names that resonated with our souls, dress in costumes that expressed our dreams, do daring deeds, dance as if no one was looking, decorate our homes with magical things,listen to music that took us out of ordinary reality into altered states of awareness. The era like the 60s, can never be repeated again. I miss the adventure and attempts to capture the anticipation of something great to happen. I appreciate the people in my life that made it special in those days. Around me, an inner peace exist with the hippies, there was something special to live without the constraints of time. To wake up each day and decide what would be the most fun to do that day or just find out as it went along. They go with the flow, follow the bliss, be here now. This was in complete opposition to the culture from which I came. They wanted new ways to value one another, rather than by wealth, status, looks, achievements, machismo, as our culture of origin had taught us, and continues to teach us through the media. They wanted to value one another for being lovable and real. Also a spirituality that actually caused you to grow as a person, not one in which people attended religious gatherings for social status and to be guided by their own Inner Spirits, rather than by priests. This general view shows a direct hit with North Vietnam 122 mm shell explosion in a U.S. ammunition bunker of 175 mm cannon emplacements at Gio Linh, next to demilitarization zone between north and south Vietnam, Sept. 1967, during the Vietnam War. (AP Photo) A young paratrooper with a mud-smeared face stares into the jungle in Vietnam on July 14, 1966, after fire fight with Viet Cong patrol in the morning. He is a member of C company, 2nd battalion, 173rd airborne brigade. (AP Photo/John Nance) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iv7_6qqfZI&feature=related Elements of the U.S. First Cavalry Air Mobile division in a landing craft approach the beach at Qui Nhon, 260 miles northeast of Saigon, Vietnam, in Sept. 1965. Advance units of 20,000 new troops are being launched for a strike on the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War. (AP Photo) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtyRtpyi5N8&feature=related Early 1960:I remember the old beautiful architectural lines of the Manila Hotel, not the new monstrous addition as it is now. it reinforces the fact that much of the loss of the quality of life in the metropolis owes to crass commercialism, slapdash development, and the regulated chaos that makes up for urban planning in the otherwise overly regulated and bureaucratized regime in the Philippines. I reflect the times in High School when we trek on to this site from Padre Faura, Rizal Hall to the US Embassy Canteen to buy our ice cream cone for 10 centavos. Pleasant memories too of my first exposure to teen age westerners on one to one basis in this Hotel at pool side parties. This song jogs the memory lane. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xdE9MpZ9kc&feature Manila Harbor, Manila City, and Intramuros, Philippines, early 1960s Notice that this photo was taken before much rebuilding in Intramuros and there is lots of empty land showing just how much of the city was cleared after WWII. The US embassy and the Manila Hotel are shown on the upper right. I relished and missed the traditions followed in a military base (MNS) about a mile to the right of this picture, now occupied by the Central Bank of the Philippines. The site of the old Fort San Antonio Abad was demolished, in favor of the bank, another sacriledge. My recollections of waking up in the morning to the bugle calls to the colors remained fresh in my mind. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67LKxmSQ148 Dewey Blvd: The jetty potruding to Manila Bay is the future Cultural Center, on the other side of Dewey is the Manila Naval Station (MNS) where we lived from 1965 to 1966. the headquarters of the Philippine Navy was relegated to a small block of land south of the Manila Yacht Club. The original plan was to reclaim the site of the cultural center(CC) to replace the location of the MNS by the Central Bank. Imelda Marcos, saw this valuable real state and confiscated the plan for her project the now CC. The yacht club remained, the Navy base (MNS) was transferred to Fort Bonifacio. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky_iVe9sjf4&feature=related Papa in the 60's as Commanding Officer(CO) MNS, extreme left Cdr. Oscar L. Tempongko http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNEkA3O5EI0&feature=related Papa and his various duty assignments in the 60's who left our midst Feb. 2010. Early in his career as a naval officer, seldom we see him for a decade as he was out to the Southern seas in Mindanao fighting the banditry and secession movements of the muslims. He will go on to higher positions, to take command of his own ship, then a number of ships as a task force commander, then Chief of Staff of the Philippine Coast Guard, a professor in academia at the National Defense College of the Philippines, Dean at the Command and General Staff College, a base commander at the Manila Naval Station and Cavite Naval Base at Sangley Pt. But what I remember most was him on the bridge of RPS 1133, and I a pre school kid, looking at a young Lt. taking his ship out to the open seas, out of Manila Bay. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDjwUzUnNpU&feature=related 1963: Above all ladies, my most gentle Mom and sis. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Et_f3Pqc9Ds A view of Taal Lake on Tagaytay Ridge a 2 hrs. ride from Fort Bonifacio (the place to go during the hot summers of the 60's) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dipFMJckZOM Medic James E. Callahan of Pittsfield, Mass., gives mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a dying soldier in war zone D, about 50 miles northeast of Saigon, June 17, 1967. Thirty-one men of the 1st Infantry Division were reported killed in the guerrilla ambush, with more than 100 wounded. (AP Photo/Henri Huet) Berkeley-Oakland City, Calif. demonstraters march against the war in Vietnam. Calif. (AP Photo) When youth counterculture rose into the mainstream and popular music expanded into previously unimagined realms in the latter half of the 60s, San Francisco was undeniably one of the most important epicenters of change. The city's history with the Renaissance poets, the Beats, and a vibrant folk scene left it in a good position to serve as a cultural engine, and the ignition of the San Francisco Sound came from dozens of sources, from Bob Dylan, Paul Butterfield, and the British Invasion to UC-Berkeley's 1964 Free Speech Movement, the evolution of freeform FM radio, and the proliferation of hallucinogenic drugs. By 1967, San Francisco was the most psychedelic city in America, if not the world http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osKrq20i5mY&feature=related Soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division carry a wounded buddy through the jungle in May 1966. (AP Photo/Henri Huet) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rklVelmLGPs&feature=related 1960: MANILA, Philippines – Rizal Avenue in Manila’s storied Sta. Cruz district. Drivers gunning the engine of their vehicles, the footsteps of pedestrians and vendors calling out to passersby—Ideal, State Theaters were my moviehouses. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anAuxXnJ56o&feature=related A wounded U.S. soldier of the 1st Infantry Division, 26th Infantry Regiment, 1st Battalion, receives first aid after being rescued from a jungle battlefield south of the Cambodian border in Vietnam's war zone C, April 2, 1967. A reconnaissance platoon ran into enemy bunkers, and their recuers were pinned down for four hours in fighting that left 7 U.S. dead and 42 wounded. (AP Photo) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYY_0NNUejY&feature=related At the far end of Escolta is one of the most beautiful streetscapes in the city with two breathtaking pre-World War II buildings facing each other: the Regina Building and the Perez-Samanillo. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3Cb2mqDRR0&feature=related 1960: The picture is indeed the original Jones bridge going down to what was then Rosario St and is now Paredes St. When you go down the bridge, you reach the first picture. I still remember this place because the RCA building which you can still see in the picture, is where my granduncle used to work. Across this building was what used to be La Estrella del Norte (the jewelry story on the corner of Escolta) and is now Savory Restaurant...Sheila http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4brSre3tZv0&feature=related Escolta, Bergs on your right, Lyric movie theater further out to the right. Lyric Theater- a theater house that I used to watch Splendor in the Grass, From Moment to Moment located in Escolta, Manila. It was owned and operated by Eastern Theatrical, Inc. At the far end of Escolta is one of the most beautiful streetscapes in the city with two breathtaking pre-World War II buildings facing each other: the Regina Building and the Perez-Samanillo....ASC http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZX89ZtcNHI&feature=related Escolta: Some of the luxury shops and bazaars in Manila of the 60's days were located in Escolta such as Botica Boie, Beck's, La Estrella del Norte, Squires & Bingham, Erlanger and Galinger, and Oceanic. Today, Escolta remained a busy commercial street, but no longer for shopping. Although some of the old Art Deco remains in the street(including the Regina Building), it is now mostly occupied by banks and other services shops. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cj6YGXMkIIc&feature=related U.S. President Lydon B. Johnson reviews troops assembled in honor of his visit to the U.S. base at Cam Ranh Bay in South Vietnam on Oct. 26, 1966 during the war. Beside the President is Gen. William Westmoreland, Commander of the U.S. Military forces in Vietnam. (AP Photo) Women and children crouch in a muddy canal as they take cover from intense Viet Cong fire at Bao Trai in Jan. of 1966, about 20 miles west of Saigon, Vietnam. (AP Photo/Horst Faas, File) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b7qaSxuZUg&feature=related Imagine there's no heaven, it's easy if you try, no hell below us, above us only sky, Imagine all the people, living for today. Imagine there's no countries, it isn't hard to do, nothing to kill or die for, and no religion too, Imagine all the people, living life in peace. You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one, I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will be as one. Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can, no need for greed or hunger, a brotherhood of man, Imagine all the people, sharing all the world.You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one,I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will live as one." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ChoOH3RAUA&feature=related Agnes, Aleta & Father Tejada at the rectory MNS, Dewey Blvd. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KODZtjOIPg&feature=related A U.S. paratrooper moves away after setting fire to house on bank of the Vaico Oriental River, 20 miles west of Saigon on Jan. 4, 1966, during a "scorched earth" operation against the Viet Cong in South Viet Nam. The 1st battalion of the 173rd airborne brigade was moving through the area, described as notorious Viet Cong territory. (AP Photo/Peter Arnett) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhKtLLIqghE&feature=related U.S. Army helicopters providing support for U.S. ground troops fly into a staging area fifty miles northeast of Saigon, Vietnam in January of 1966. (AP Photo/Henri Huet, File) Taal Lake a 2 hr. drive from Fort Bonifacio...frequent stops during the hot summer days with PMC friends. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jV-fnarDho&list=MLGxdCwVVULXd0_FEdKuuDySJEIaa0ZOc6&playnext=2 What instinct forces man to journey on, Yes, in life we all reach a crossroad sometime. We make painful decisions and take some risks as we pursue our dreams. Urged by a longing blind but dominant! One ship sails East, And another West, By the self-same winds that blow,Tis the set of the sails And not the gales, That tells the way we go. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ChoOH3RAUA&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOByH_iOn88 A helicopter lifts a wounded American soldier on a stretcher during Operation Silver City in Vietnam, March 13, 1966. (AP Photo) Lyceum inside the walls of Intramuros further left is MIT U.S. troops carry the body of a fellow soldier across a rice paddy for helicopter evacuation near Bong Son in early February 1966. The soldier, a member of the 1st Air Cavalry Division, was killed during Operation Masher on South Vietnam's central coast. (AP Photo/Rick Merron) Along the way to Tanay underneath the tamarind trees http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3Cb2mqDRR0&feature=related I would be remiss if I do not mention my favorite swimming hole in Tanay, Daranak Falls. Remembering fondly, cherishing memories of early summer vacations spent at this place. This 14-meter high falls is truly a refreshing site. A short walk over the top of Daranak are smaller, cascading streams known as Batlag Falls. It is located at Bgy. Tandang Kutyo in the town of Tanay. The place has been transformed into a public park/resort operated by the government. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw_4h07DUKk&feature=related My Church in the town of my birth:Tanay, Built in 1778, the church was named after the Archbishop Ildefonso of Toledo, Spain, who was consecrated during the year 657 AD; revered for his spiritual vitality and deep writings contained in “ The Book of the Virginity of Maria”. Behind the heavy stone edifice decorated with Hispanic, archetype windows and stone sculpture of its saint, are legends that found its way to this generation. Tradition has it that an image of the Lady of the Immaculate Conception, was found among the belongings of our fleeing forefathers on the onset of the Spanish Invasion in 1573; the same image found among the remnants from the fire that gutted the first church in 1620- a lone survivor! During the Chinese Uprising in 1639, Father Geronimo de Frias hid it in the fields but was later on found by the Chinese rebel who tried to destroy the image, instead to themselves befell violent death. I cherise the days I spent in Tanay in the early years of my life. Looking around one last time, before I departed to the US, at the people, at the church behind us, scanning thru the mental pictures I’ve taken of the places that I spent in my youth. The photo shows twilight, already shifting to the blue hues of the evening from the orange skies of late afternoon, a perfect way to end the day at Parola on the shores of Laguna de Bay. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZpwRCw_wJI&feature=related A helicopter hovers over the field, ready to load personnel and equipment during Operation Masher in the Vietnam War, May 7, 1966. (AP Photo) In a sudden monsoon rain, part of a company of about 130 South Vietnamese regional soldiers moves downriver in sampans during a dawn attack against a Viet Cong camp in the flooded Mekong Delta, about 13 miles northeast of Cantho, on Jan. 10, 1966. A handful of guerrillas were reported killed or wounded. (AP Photo/Henri Huet) Escolta, Bergs on your right, Lyric movie theater further out to the right. Lyric Theater- a theater house that I used to get in and watch Splendor in the Grass, From Moment to Moment located in Escolta, Manila. It was owned and operated by Eastern Theatrical, Inc. At the far end of Escolta is one of the most beautiful streetscapes in the city with two breathtaking pre-World War II buildings facing each other: the Regina Building and the Perez-Samanillo. Pfc. Lacey Skinner of Birmingham, Ala., crawls through the mud of a rice paddy in January of 1966, avoiding heavy Viet Cong fire near An Thi in South Vietnam, as troops of the U.S. 1st Cavalry Division fight a fierce 24-hour battle along the central coast. (AP Photo/Henri Huet) Pasay City, Aristocrat (Barbecue Plaza) Plaza, Dewey Blvd: So called, as barbecue stands abound from twilight to dawn. Scenes of fights between warring gangs during the evening and where ladies of the night sell their wares. Pasay City, Aristocrat (Barbecue Plaza) Plaza, Dewey Blvd: So called, as barbecue stands abound from twilight to dawn. Scenes of fights between warring gangs during the evening and where ladies of the night sell their wares. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7G1dKvxrvU&feature=related A helicopter full of Marines heading out on patrol lifts off the airstrip at the Khe Sanh combat base on June 27, 1968 in Vietnam. (AP Photo) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YV5rI1Chjfk&feature=BF&list=PLF00E3652E2C15C2C&index=36 Even then, I noticed the sparce landscape. Trees were cut down for fuel and charcoal Vietnamese Navy boats laden with Vietnamese Army infantrymen swing along the Bien Tre river to launch a search mission some 50 miles south of Saigon in the Meking Delta's Kien Hoa province, July 11, 1967. Viet cong guerrillas fired on the flotlla from the brushy shoreline, but no major contact was made. (AP Photo) Smoke rises from the southwestern part of Saigon on May 7, 1968 as residents stream across a bridge leaving the capital to escape heavy fighting between the Viet Cong and South Vietnamese soldiers. (AP Photo) South Vietnamese Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan, chief of the national police, fires his pistol into the head of suspected Viet Cong officer Nguyen Van Lem, also known as Bay Lop, on a Saigon street, early in the Tet Offensive on Feb. 1, 1968. (AP Photo/Eddie Adams)US troop numbers peaked in 1968 with President Johnson approving the raising of the maximum number of Americans in Vietnam to 549,500. The year was the most expensive in the Vietnam war with the American spending US$77.4 billion (US$ 484 billion in 2010) on the war. The year also became the deadliest of the Vietnam War for America and its allies with 27,915 South Vietnamese (ARVN) soldiers killed and the Americans suffering 16,592 killed compared to around two hundred thousand of the communist forces killed. The deadliest week of the Vietnam War for the USA was during the Tet Offensive specifically February 11–17, 1968, during which period 543 Americans were killed in action, and 2547 were wounded. Bug eyed, Anxious and Single me in June of 66. In later years, I discovered from our family tree that we have the same maternal great grandfather. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4xntqdDBbM&feature=related June 1966: The Days of Wine and Roses..... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGA6b-DoX4c An American F-105 warplane is shot down and the pilot ejects and opens his parachute in this photo taken by North Vietnamese photograper Mai Nam on September 1966 near Vinh Phuc, north of Hanoi. This photo is one of the most recognized images taken by a North Vietnamese photographer during the war. The pilot of the aircraft was taken hostage and held in a Hanoi prison from 1966 to 1973. (AP Photo/Pioneer Newspaper/Mai Nam) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dg-jjb9_h4g&feature=related Remembering fondly,wistfully sighing, cherishing memories of days gone by Days of Open Land and freedom days of Open Minds entwined days of Tribal Consciousness and recognizing our own kind Days of sun and moon and starlight outlined by the pines of Love and Peace and Light flowing from our minds We'd all been shaken by the revolution but we knew that we could heal by living lives more closely to the simple and the real and getting down to basics and living with the land and searching for the truth and trying to understand what this crazy world was missing with it's machines and rules and noise and seeing a different reality than winning"if you die with the most toys"and we found the answers in the sunrise the sunset and the day and in the very stars at night and the seasons' gentle sway and we found the truth that we'd been seeking we'd already known ever since our birth to live life fully live it simply - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrkwgTBrW78&feature=related Pasig River: Foreground is Jones Bridge from Binondo to Ermita. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qu_rItLPTXc&playnext=1&list=PLCB2D271EC0C9E3D5 Most accounts say the "summer" actually began Jan. 14, 1967, with the "Human Be-In," billed as "a Renaissance of compassion, awareness and love" in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, which drew up to 20,000 people. The Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane performed, and among the speakers were poet Allen Ginsberg and LSD guru Timothy Leary, who for the first time used the phrase he would make famous: "Turn on, tune in, drop out." The event established San Francisco as the center of the emerging counterculture of hippies and flower children, and Scott McKenzie's hit song "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)" promised that "summertime will be a love-in there." Several San Francisco activists soon formed the Council for the Summer of Love to help prepare the city for the influx of young people from across the country that was expected after schools and colleges let out for summer. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97JXkUK6NsM&feature=related The sun breaks through the dense jungle foliage around the embattled town of Binh Gia, 40 miles east of Saigon, in early January 1965, as South Vietnamese troops, joined by U.S. advisors, rest after a cold, damp and tense night of waiting in an ambush position for a Viet Cong attack that didn't come. One hour later, as the possibility of an overnight attack by the Viet Cong diasappeared, the troops moved out for another long, hot day hunting the elusive communist guerrillas in the jungles. (AP Photo/Horst Faas) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C0yTQSs1LU&feature=related A supply helicopter comes in for a landing on a hilltop forming part of Fire Support Base 29, west of Dak To in South Vietnam's central highlands on June 3, 1968. Around the fire base are burnt out trees caused by heavy air strikes from fighting between North Vietnamese and American troops. (AP Photo) At Sta. Cruz Church - Blessed Sacrament Fathers , adjacent to Plaza Santa Cruz: Sta. Cruz Church is located in downtown Manila, at the side of the former financial center Escolta and by the entrance of Chinatown. It is an oasis of Eucharistic adoration and prayer in the heart of the busy city. Administered by the Blessed Sacrament Fathers and Brothers since August 1957, it is considered as a Shrine of the Blessed Sacrament and a center for Eucharistic liturgy and formation. U.S. Marines pass a Catholic church as they patrol near Danang, Vietnam, during the Vietnam War in 1968. (AP Photo) Photographer Larry Burrows, far left, struggles through elephant grass and the rotorwash of an American evacuation helicopter as he helps GIs to carry a wounded buddy on a stretcher from the jungle to the helicopter in Mimot, Cambodia, May 4, 1970. The evacuation was during the U.S. incursion into Cambodia during the Vietnam War. (AP Photo/Henri Huet) A 1958 Chevy belair 4 dr hdtp., a popular model then. The Bank of the PI building further left, not shown was my work place at Iwaii & Co., (an import export venture in sales) as a working student in college. 1960: Pasig River still alive then, now heavy polluted and black in color. The Pasig River was a clear, flowing body of water that served as the center of commerce in Spanish colonial Manila. Stretching 27 kilometers, it connects Laguna Lake to Manila Bay and was the major source of water and livelihood of the many communities along its banks. People washed clothes in the shallower waters and fisher folks’ daily catch were always bountiful. The passenger boats that plied the river from the nearby province of Laguna to Manila and back served as the primary means of transportation. Today’s generation, however, has no recollection of the Pasig River in its heyday. 1960: The picture is indeed Jones bridge going down to what was then Rosario St and is now Paredes St. When you go down the bridge, you reach the first picture. I still remember this place because the RCA building which you can still see in the picture, is where my granduncle used to work. Across this building was what used to be La Estrella del Norte (the jewelry story on the corner of Escolta) and is now Savory Restaurant...Sheila http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4brSre3tZv0&feature=related 5 years before:Notice the delicate pillars at the end of the bridge abutments. It was demolished for a modern look with steel pipes for handrails. What a waste of our architectural heritage.... The picture is indeed Jones bridge going down to what was then Rosario St and is now Paredes St. When you go down the bridge, you reach the first picture. I still remember this place because the RCA building which you can still see in the picture, is where my granduncle used to work. Across this building was what used to be La Estrella del Norte (the jewelry story on the corner of Escolta) and is now Savory Restaurant...Sheila South Vietnamese forces follow after terrified children, including 9-year-old Kim Phuc, center, as they run down Route 1 near Trang Bang after an aerial napalm attack on suspected Viet Cong hiding places on June 8, 1972. A South Vietnamese plane accidentally dropped its flaming napalm on South Vietnamese troops and civilians. The terrified girl had ripped off her burning clothes while fleeing. The children from left to right are: Phan Thanh Tam, younger brother of Kim Phuc, who lost an eye, Phan Thanh Phouc, youngest brother of Kim Phuc, Kim Phuc, and Kim's cousins Ho Van Bon, and Ho Thi Ting. Behind them are soldiers of the Vietnam Army 25th Division. (AP Photo/Nick Ut) U.S. troops move toward the crest of Hill 875 at Dak To in November, 1967 after 21 days of fighting, during which at least 285 Americans were believed killed. The hill in the central highlands, of little apparent strategic value to the North Vietnamese, was nevertheless the focus of intense fighting and heavy losses to both sides. (AP Photo) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpWEv9Q0XQ4&feature=related Binondo in Old Manila: The word Binondo came from the word Binundok which means mountain or boondocks. Binondo was mentioned several times in the novels of Dr. Jose Rizal, Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo. Moreover, the Philippine Revolutionary hero, Andres Bonifacio married Gregoria "Oryang" de Jesus in 1895 in the historic Binondo Church. During the Spanish colonial period, many esteros (canals) were located in the Binondo area feeding into the Pasig River. Notice the delicate pillars at the end of the bridge abutments. It was demolished for a modern look with steel pipes for handrails. What a waste of our architectural heritage.... The picture is indeed Jones bridge going down to what was then Rosario St and is now Paredes St. When you go down the bridge, you reach the first picture. I still remember this place because the RCA building which you can still see in the picture, is where my granduncle used to work. Across this building was what used to be La Estrella del Norte (the jewelry story on the corner of Escolta) and is now Savory Restaurant...Sheila http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GchrCu4MP4Y&feature=related Kalesa in Old Manila: Binondo is the historic birthplace of the mestizo de sangley or Chinese mestizo. It was also the birthplace of St. Lorenzo Ruiz, a mestizo de sangley who would later become the First Filipino Saint. Mother Ignacia del Espiritu Santo, who is also a mestiza de sangley, was the founder of the Congregation of the Religious of the Virgin Mary. Plaza Lorenzo Ruiz and the Binondo Church (formal name: Minor Basilica of St. Lorenzo Ruiz) are named after him. And the Chapel of Our Lady of China is also in the Binondo Church. The girls of St. Theresa class 67 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH23Bik-6uo&feature=related The girls of St. Theresa, the innocense of the young ladies above, untouched by the sixties youth revolution remained in my mind. Why someday, one of them will be my partner in life. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGvXgwlA3kQ&NR=1 We have uncertainties about the future, the world was unstable enough, and to live life to the fullest, I have to start a family. In addition to the Vietnam War the United States was being rocked by the Civil Rights Movement and riots in the streets. Western Europe was experiencing a wave of domestic terrorist groups. The Middle East was in turmoil over the Six Day War. Czechoslovakia had tried to liberalize their Communist government and been invaded by Russia. This was the height of the Cold War and the United States and the Soviet Union were nose to nose armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons. There was a lot going on in addition to the Cultural Revolution and Vietnam War. 1966:St Theresas Class 1967.The best friend of Marissa, Mila Montinola far left married a relative of mine in later years further entertwined the bonds of friendship. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRkHdh5k73A&feature=related Quang Duc, a Buddhist monk, burns himself to death on a Saigon street on June 11, 1963, to protest alleged persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government. (AP Photo/Malcolm Browne, File) General William Westmoreland talks with troops of first battalion, 16th regiment of 2nd brigade of U.S. First Division at their positions near Bien Hoa in Vietnam, 1965. (AP Photo) Anti-Vietnam war protesters march down Fifth Avenue near to 81st Street in New York City on April 27, 1968, in protest of the U.S. involvement in the Vietnamese war. The demonstrators were en route to nearby Central Park for mass "Stop the war" rally. (AP Photo) The Sixties embodied a spirit of self-awareness and introspection. We sought truth, demanded justice, and found freedom in self-expression. We rejected the restrictions of a puritanical lifestyle. We sought out and embraced new philosophies. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02DCW8t-Zfk&playnext=1&list=PL6BC68C0E03483767 Injured Vietnamese receive aid as they lie on the street after a bomb explosion outside the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, Vietnam, March 30, 1965. Smoke rises from wreckage in the background. At least two Americans and several Vietnamese were killed in the bombing. (AP Photo/Horst Faas) Now in San Francisco immersed in an open cultural exchange with Dora and Joyce. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mfL29KdPeE Wounded marines lie about the floor of a H34 helicopter, August 19, 1965 as they were evacuated from the battle area on Van Tuong peninsula. (AP Photo) A U.S. Marine CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter comes down in flames after being hit by enemy ground fire during Operation Hastings, just south of the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Vietnam, July 15, 1966. The helicopter crashed and exploded on a hill, killing one crewman and 12 Marines. Three crewman escaped with serious burns. (AP Photo/Horst Faas) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io_6UtzBf28&feature=related Weary after a third night of fighting against North Vietnamese troops, U.S. Marines crawl from foxholes located south of the demilitarized zone (DMZ) in Vietnam, 1966. The helicopter at left was shot down when it came in to resupply the unit. (AP Photo/Henri Huet) Today I registered at the draft board in Oakland and was classified as 1A... ready to be shipped to Vietnam. However, my lottery number 208 never reached selection. Photo was in Alameda with the Jarins http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYqd-CSu_co&feature=related Water-filled bomb craters from B-52 strikes against the Viet Cong mark the rice paddies and orchards west of Saigon, Vietnam, 1966. Most of the area had been abandoned by the peasants who used to farm on the land. (AP Photo/Henri Huet) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcoNNSkSCLg&feature=related A South Vietnamese soldier holds a cocked pistol as he questions two suspected Viet Cong guerrillas captured in a weed-filled marsh in the southern delta region late in August 1962. The prisoners were searched, bound and questioned before being marched off to join other detainees. (AP Photo/Horst Faas) Sgt. Robert Lee (My Brother in law aka my pretty twin brother during our escapades, I am the smart twin) in Vietnam. Extremely patriotic, he volunteered in the Infantry during the Vietnam war at the age of 18. Assigned to the 4th Infantry Division, deployed from Fort Lewis to Camp Holloway, Pleiku, Vietnam on September 25, 1966 and served more than four years, returning to Fort Carson, Colorado on December 8, 1970. His division's, two brigades operated in the Central Highlands/II Corps Zone, but its 3rd Brigade where Bob was, including the division's armor battalion, was sent to Tay Ninh Province northwest of Saigon to take part in Operation Attleboro (September to November, 1966), and later Operation Junction City (February to May, 1967), both in War Zone C. Throughout his service in Vietnam the division conducted combat operations in the western Central Highlands along the border between Cambodia and Vietnam. Decorated for gallantry in action and incurred disabilities in combat. A U.S. crewman runs from a crashed CH-21 Shawnee troop helicopter near the village of Ca Mau in the southern tip of South Vietnam, Dec. 11, 1962. Two helicopters crashed without serious injuries during a government raid on the Viet Cong-infiltrated area. Both helicopters were destroyed to keep them out of enemy hands. (AP Photo/Horst Faas) 3A Helmeted U.S. Helicopter Crewchief, holding carbine, watches ground movements of Vietnamese troops from above during a strike against Viet Cong Guerrillas in the Mekong Delta Area, January 2, 1963. The communist Viet Cong claimed victory in the continuing struggle in Vietnam after they shot down five U.S. helicopters. An American officer was killed and three other American servicemen were injured in the action. (AP Photo) Caskets containing the bodies of seven American helicopter crewmen killed in a crash on January 11, 1963 were loaded aboard a plane on Monday, Jan. 14 for shipment home. The crewmen were on board a H21 helicopter that crashed near a hut on an Island in the middle of one of the branches of the Mekong River, about 55 miles Southwest of Saigon. (AP Photo) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-Xrlf3taEo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQhKqlOccHE&feature=related The other theater on Rizal Avenue I can recall is Universal. Here I saw with Joe Lladones the movie The Great Race starring Tony Curtis, Natalie Wood, Jack Lemmon, Peter Falk, and others. It was so funny then although some scenes were kind of predictable to me, so while we were laughing I gave the next scene away. Joe laughing hard was convinced I saw the movie once before, and I could not change his mind. So I laughed harder. Jack Lemmon was a truly talented actor in either a comedy or drama. Like in this movie and in Mr. Roberts, and a dramatic role in Days Of Wine And Roses and The Apartment. Natalie Wood was another beautiful actress. Are we not lucky we saw excellent movies by talented actors and actresses?ReneR Mapua and Lyceum College extreme upper left, St. Theresas extreme right. A City Hall the dominant motif (remember that the pre-war City Hall was almost razed to the ground)…this tower-like building will command views of Manila Bay, the Botanical Gardens, the surrounding districts of Manila, including the mountains of Cavite, Corregidor, Mariveles and Bataan, Banahaw, and Makiling.” The air in Manila back then must have really been pollution-free for these views to be possible A South Vietnamese Marine, severely wounded in a Viet Cong ambush, is comforted by a comrade in a sugar cane field at Duc Hoa, about 12 miles from Saigon, Aug. 5, 1963. A platoon of 30 Vietnamese Marines was searching for communist guerrillas when a long burst of automatic fire killed one Marine and wounded four others. (AP Photo/Horst Faas) A father holds the body of his child as South Vietnamese Army Rangers look down from their armored vehicle March 19, 1964. The child was killed as government forces pursued guerrillas into a village near the Cambodian border. (AP Photo/Horst Faas) The songs by the Beatles were foremost in my formative years, more of a pick up happy energy then. Early correct choices made a big difference of what I want to be later on. Against that was the temptations of an open society, unlike that of the country I left behind. The decade saw the Vietnam War, the gradual relaxation in the social structures governing morals, and took a step further as millions of women tossed out their bras. With a focus already around early gratification, exploration and liberation, it found more and more uninhibited youth in the baring of skin with the influences of the hippie movement and flower children. The mod society had been one that focused around materialism but the hippies sought to depart from it by creating what came to be known as the anti-fashion and counter culture movement. With all these temptations meant to disorient, I survived this decade remained focused on studies, work and family. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LedUjMuTR7Q&feature=BF&list=QL&index=21 The strain of battle for Dong Xoai is shown on the face of U.S. Army Sgt. Philip Fink, an advisor to the 52nd Vietnamese Ranger battalion, shown June 12, 1965. The unit bore the brunt of recapturing the jungle outpost from the Viet Cong. (AP Photo/Steve Stibbens) ...Communications remained open to love ones left in the Philippines: There is no place in this whole wide world you can travel to where your spirit does not direct or guide you towards your destiny... Whatever they think about complete independence in a foreign land, my heart still dwell in the country I left behind. Often I think of the beautiful town Tanay that is seated by the Bay; Often in thought go up and down the pleasant streets of that dear old town, and memories of my sweetheart comes back to me. My beloved Mother in Law An unidentified U.S. Army soldier wears a hand lettered "War Is Hell" slogan on his helmet, in Vietnam on June 18, 1965. (AP Photo/Horst Faas, File) No amount of rationalization or blaming can preempt the moment of choice each of us brings to our situation here on this planet. The lesson of the 60's is that people who cared enough to do right could change history.We didn't end racism but we ended legal segregation. We ended the idea that you could send half-a-million soldiers around the world to fight a war that people do not support. We ended the idea that women are second-class citizens. We made the environment an issue that couldn't be avoided. The big battles that we won cannot be reversed. We were young, self-righteous, reckless, hypocritical, brave,silly, headstrong and scared half to death. U.S. 25th Infantry division troops check the entrance to a Vietcong tunnel complex they discovered on a sweep northwest of their division headquarters at Cu Chi on Sept. 7, 1968 in Vietnam. (AP Photo) The Associated Press photographer Huynh Thanh My covers a Vietnamese battalion pinned down in a Mekong Delta rice paddy about a month before he was killed in combat on Oct. 10, 1965. (AP PHOTO) Plaza Goiti Jeepney stop: In the 60's my jeep ride to Tayabas St., begins here. Notice Dencia restaurant near the small bridge where hawkers sell puppies and dollars. An American C-123 cargo plane burns after being hit by communist mortars while taxiing on the Marine post at Khe Sanh, South Vietnam on March 1, 1968. (AP Photo/Peter Arnett) Wounded U.S. paratroopers are helped by fellow soldiers to a medical evacuation helicopter on Oct. 5, 1965 during the Vietnam War. Paratroopers of the 173rd Airborne Brigade's First Battalion suffered many casualties in the clash with Viet Cong guerrillas in the jungle of South Vietnam's "D" Zone, 25 miles Northeast of Saigon. (AP Photo) Waterfront Pasig River: Sixty percent of the estimated 8.4 million people residing in the Laguna de Bay Region discharge their solid and liquid wastes indirectly to the lake through its tributaries. This, does not include Metro Manila's discharges to the river. A large percentage of these wastes are mainly agricultural while the rest are either domestic or industrial. Domestic and industrial wastes contribute almost equally at thirty percent each. Meanwhile, agricultural wastes take up the remaining forty percent. In a recent sensitivity waste load model ran by the Laguna Lake Development . 70 percent of Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) loadings came from households, 19 percent from industries, and 11 percent came from land run-off or erosion. Without intervention, Pasig River is biologically dead, A U.S. B-52 stratofortress drops a load of 750-pounds bombs over a Vietnam coastal area during the Vietnam War, Nov. 5, 1965. (AP Photo/USAF) Chaplain John McNamara of Boston makes the sign of the cross as he administers the last rites to photographer Dickey Chapelle in South Vietnam Nov. 4, 1965. Chapelle was covering a U.S. Marine unit on a combat operation near Chu Lai for the National Observer when she was seriously wounded, along with four Marines, by an exploding mine. She died in a helicopter en route to a hospital. She became the first female war correspondent to be killed in Vietnam, as well as the first American female reporter to be killed in action. Her body was repatriated with an honor guard consisting of six Marines and she was given full Marine burial. (AP Photo/Henri Huet) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ulm8F15tTyg&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5ecvBaqHBk&feature=related First Cavalry Division Medic Thomas Cole, from Richmond, Va., looks up with his one uncovered eye as he continues to treat a wounded Staff Sgt. Harrison Pell during a January 1966 firefight in the Central Highlands between U.S. troops and a combined North Vietnamese and Vietcong force. (AP Photo/Henri Huet) Rizal Avenue south end. How can I not recognize an old haunt. There are two more movie theaters on the same side as Ideal. I think one is Dalisay which shows Filipino movies only. The other I can not recall. I can name some of the movies I saw in those theaters. ReneR Pinned down by Viet Cong machine gun fire, a U.S. medic looks over at a seriuosly wounded comrade as they huddle behind a dike in a rice paddy, near Phu Loi, South Vietnam, August 14, 1966. (AP Photo)http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=iv&annotation_id=annotation_920332&v=dk3Ei_yoI4c The era like the 60s, can never be repeated again. I miss the adventure and attempts to capture the anticipation of something great to happen. I appreciate the people in my life that made it special in those days. Around me, an inner peace exist with the hippies, there was something special to live without the constraints of time. To wake up each day and decide what would be the most fun to do that day or just find out as it went along. They go with the flow, follow the bliss, be here now. This was in complete opposition to the culture from which I came. They wanted new ways to value one another, rather than by wealth, status, looks, achievements, machismo, as our culture of origin had taught us, and continues to teach us through the media. They wanted to value one another for being lovable and real. Also a spirituality that actually caused you to grow as a person, not one in which people attended religious gatherings for social status and to be guided by their own Inner Spirits, rather than by priests. Three American marines sleep atop ammunition boxes during a pause in the fighting at Gio Linh on April 2, 1967, just south of the demilitarized zone in Vietnam. (AP Photo)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io_6UtzBf28&feature=related Breaktime at work in San Francisco. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3Cb2mqDRR0&feature=related A U.S. infantryman from A Company, 1st Battalion, 16th Infantry carries a crying child from Cam Xe village after dropping a phosphorous grenade into a bunker cleared of civilians during an operation near the Michelin rubber plantation northwest of Saigon, August 22, 1966. A platoon of the 1st Infantry Division raided the village, looking for snipers that had inflicted casualties on the platoon. GIs rushed about 40 civilians out of the village before artillery bombardment ensued. (AP Photo/Horst Faas) 1964: My admiration forever of the Legaspis' who met in college, both graduates of Class 1936 UP College of Law and got a lovely daughter. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lv8k0VI9tBc Friends of the family http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3Cb2mqDRR0&feature=related Western friends of the family, from the American Diplomatic Corps. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3Cb2mqDRR0&feature=related A former UP Prep High schoolmate among the class of STC 67, 2nd from the left Carol Joy Cocjin. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJy-JuKSaHc&feature=related PMA class'64: The Mayo brothers, both sides of Marissa...2nd to the left of Marissa was Job Mayo, prospective rivals in the future. Eureka, Sweet destiny how long have you been looking for me? by way of the Omega!! People we meet bring life alive, another Alexander by fate introduced for me to see, getting to know one another in time, sometimes you win. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95cECKO3-A8&feature=related 1966: May you find true love. Let abundance be your constant companion, so that you have much to share. May mirth be near you always, like a lamp shining brightly on the many paths you travel. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfWVKQoRXhk&feature=list_related&playnext=1&list=MLGxdCwVVULXfH-k_IVzQbQcibTdWOSgKg U.S. soldiers are on the search for Viet Cong hideouts in a swampy jungle creek bed, June 6, 1965, at Chutes de Trian, some 40 miles northeast of Saigon, South Vietnam. (AP Photo/Horst Faas) The 60's were the result of that breakthrough.The Sixties embodied a spirit of self-awareness and introspection. We sought truth, demanded justice, and found freedom in self-expression. We rejected the restrictions of a puritanical lifestyle. We sought out and embraced new philosophies. We focused on the heart, and by doing so, reopened our cookie jar of possibilities·politically, socially, sexually and spiritually. The effects of that explosion have permeated our culture. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FMhnl0__Vo&feature=related Meanwhile the innocense of the young ladies above, untouched by the sixties youth revolution remained in my mind. Why someday, one of them will be my partner in life. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VQtc2Ajkj4 Demonstrators show their sign of protest as ROTC cadets parade at Ohio State University in May of 1970 during a ceremony in Columbus, Ohio during the Vietnam War. (AP Photo) We were living in fear: fear of the bomb, fear of sex, fear of communism, and fear of our own governments. We wanted to break free. The 60's were the result of that breakthrough.The Sixties embodied a spirit of self-awareness and introspection. We sought truth, demanded justice, and found freedom in self-expression.We rejected the restrictions of a puritanical lifestyle. We sought out and embraced new philosophies. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UWRypqz5-o&feature=related San Franciscos Fox Theater was built in 1929. In the early 1960's the theater was losing money and the expense of maintaing a theater as large as this was unfeasible. The decision was made to close the theater. It was offered for sale to the City of San Francisco however it was turned down. The building was demolished and in its place the "Fox Plaza" was constructed a combination office and apartment building. Fox Plaza 5th floor was the site of my office in Urban Planning, Dept. of Transportation, State of California in the late 60's. The last film's were shown on February 15, 1963. The following night an event called "Farewell to the Fox" took place. After a week or so of selling off artifacts from the theater the wreaking ball took over..http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCqi6D-KgME&feature=related Heading up California St: San Francisco is one of the few truly unique cities in the United States. It could not possibly be mistaken for another city, and its position on the West Coast at the dramatic mouth of a bay gives it an aura unlike any other place I've been. Its hilly topography alone sets it apart, but from its roots as a Spanish mission to the boom of the Gold Rush, right through the mid-20th century San Francisco Renaissance and 1967's Summer of Love, the city has attracted a mix of people that's kept alive a certain frontier spirit that persisted long after it became one of the country's largest urban centers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvCMN2gfyzE Looking up Powell St. from Market St. The canteen at Woolworth on your right, served me well at lunch. During my job search, the hills of San Francisco was a hindrance. I think my overdeveloped legs were the outcome of the constant walking in SF. The Filipino community has grown remarkably since World War II and has spread to all areas of the city, especially the South of Market area. The affluent Castro district (technically Eureka Valley near Twin Peaks) has attracted gays and lesbians from throughout the country, becoming perhaps the most famous gay neighbourhood in the world. Its streets are adorned with elegantly restored Victorian homes and landmarks highlighting significant dates in the struggle for gay rights. It is said that no local politician can win an election without the gay community's vote. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryF9p-nqsWw Emotions portrays a job search in San Francisco in the sixties. Though this day may bring new challenges, yet not manifest, may I ever be reminded how much my life is blest in this new land filled with new technical opprtunities. http://carolynspreciousmemories.com/elvis/yesterday.html Dropping down California St. Fabled hills, were the scourge of the handicap, nowhere in any city but San Francisco, where wheel chairs are absent...my own observation. I remember there were so many people coming in for the Peace March, we wondered around listening to the sounds of the bands warming up at the Union Square. The guitars faded in and out like the morning fog that drifted in and out on the breeze off the bay. Again, there was the thick smell of incense and marijuana, but there was something else in the atmosphere as well: the air was glowing electric with excitement and anticipation. Everyone felt that we were about to be part of something really big. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxMUiZzWy78 From China Town looking down to Market Street in San Francisco. A roller coaster ride. I remember my poor car, burning its clutch running uphill in one of these streets. It is one of those stick shift that I fancy, driving the streets of San Francisco like Steve McQueen in Bullit. I did have the same car as Steve did, sold it at the same price as I bought it 25 years later to a good friend and I wish I did not. Powell & Market a memorable place. There was a time when people were marching as far behind me as I could see, and as far in front of me as I could see. It was an ocean of people moving peacefully and happily together through the cool, breezy streets of San Francisco, with the gingerbread trim of the old Victorian buildings smiling in surprise. What an amazing experience! More than a peace march, or protest, it was a celebration. As a nation we were on the verge of a momentous awakening. It was as though we had just discovered a truth that had been kept from us: We were huge in number, united in mind and spirit, our cause was just and we were determined to make our voice heard! We were no longer going to blindly send us youth off to foreign lands to be slaughtered like sheep. We wanted the Texan red neck LBJ out of the White House and our troops out of Vietnam . http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHCcA1pG35I&feature=related A few customers stand beneath the doomed marquee on the night of February 10, 1963. The building was demolished and in its place the "Fox Plaza" was constructed a combination office and apartment building. Fox Plaza 5th floor was the site of my office in Urban Planning, Dept. of Transportation, State of California in the late 60's. The last film's were shown on February 15, 1963. The following night an event called "Farewell to the Fox" tookplace. After a week or so of selling off artifacts from the theater the wreaking ball took over http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmdPQp6Jcdk 1966 Fox Plaza, it stands on the site of the former Fox Theatre, demolished in 1963. I remember walking thru Van Ness and Market St. the strong winds of San Francisco magnified like a wind tunnel. It Acts like a sail, that many times my hat blew away. My recollection about this building were all positive, all the five years of my stay in Highway design and Urban Planning. The first twelve floors contain office space. Unlike many buildings, Fox Plaza has a 13th floor actually labeled "13", although this floor is the service floor and is not rented out. The 14th floor contains a gymnasium and laundry facilities as well as apartments, while floors 15 through 29 are exclusively rental apartments. The main attraction during coffee break was the fashion show atmosphere of beautiful young ladies well chosen by private companies at Fox Plaza to the delight of bachelors like us. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uI4XyMf_168&feature=related April 1967: Blessing of the Rings Graduation Ceremonies STC Class of 1967, Marissa graduated Summa Cum Laude BSBA. I believe music reinforces the efficiencies of the brain's connections, it is also true that being wise is inherited from good stock. Although, the selection process is eternally perplexing, the myriads of likes and dislikes filter our personalities to no end. However, never mind that, as I believe that the merging of our lives was that of fate and destiny in the cosmic design inherent in all living things. Whether or not you believe it to be true, I dreamt of her 15 years before we met, the street where she lived and the likeness of the child that she was. The music alone is a gift, music alone shall live never to die in our hearts. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbTrfT2Dcwc&feature=channel Old Intramuros. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmdPQp6Jcdk I was here and experienced the free Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco, where people were pure examples of the possibilities and limits of this mid 60’s countercultural movement. In their “free city,” of hippie origin, they set up a free housing network, a communication system, concerts, and store (for free clothes and household goods.) and held a regular food giveaway. The diggers were the theater geeks of these hippies, those claiming to be life actors, scripting their own stories and turning every day life into a theater of endless possibilities. The Photo depicts Anti-Vietnam war demonstrators fill Fulton Street in San Francisco. The five-mile march through the city would end with a peace rally at Kezar Stadium. In the background is San Francisco City Hall. (AP Photo) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02DCW8t-Zfk&playnext=1&list=PL6BC68C0E03483767 One of the few photos that survived my early escapades in San Francisco with Dora and Joyce In San Francisco with Dora and Joyce.... friends. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WLyeDMKHss&feature=related Part of a crowd of pro-Vietnam War demonstrators hold up signs and American flags in support of U.S. policy in Vietnam in Wakefield, Mass., on Oct. 29, 1967. The demonstration was organized by 19-year-old Paul P. Christopher, a Wakefield high school senior who became "burned up" by anti-Vietnam War demonstrators. (AP Photo/J. Walter Green) A U.S. Marine sergeant points directions to a group of newly arrived replacement soldiers atop embattled Hill 881, below the demilitarized zone near the Laotian border, South Vietnam, in May 1967. The men were flown in by helicopter to enforce U.S. Marine lines badly weakened by casualties after several days of fighting for the strategic hills. (AP Photo) A wounded member of the 1st Plt. Company "C," 25th Infantry Division, is helped to a waiting UH-1D "Iroquois" helicopter in Vietnam, May 10, 1967, during the Vietnam War. (AP Photo) U.S. Marines of the 3rd Battallion, 4th Marines, crouch in the cover of a pagoda entrance as their patrol moves through a village along the Ben Hai river in the southern sector of the DMZ in South Vietnam, on May 22, 1967. The pagoda walls are richly decorated with images of dragons and snakes. (AP Photo/Kim Ki Sam) Thoughts and Fantacies Pondered: Here is a young engineer in a strange land, prepared to start from the bottom rung. There is but only one chance for a new begining, an opportunity to practice what I have learned about life. To make do with what I have, trully it is how I play the cards that I’ve been dealt that matters most. All that I sought and didn't find is hidden in the cards, waiting for me to search it out with more determination. All the good that I tried for and didn't achieve in the Philippines is mine. I have to restrict myself to fewer conflicting desires. All that I have dreamed is here. It is all for the taking. Be stallwart and strong, do not hesitate, or don't dare to do. Ambitions and loved ones shall be the trumpets to wake a strong purpose. The new adventure is at hand and lies before me. Be careful how you tread on it, no second best for the sake of those left behind, as every mark will have its just rewards. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Am05yZehlAM&feature=related American infantrymen crowd into a mud-filled bomb crater and look up at tall jungle trees seeking out Viet Cong snipers firing at them during a battle in Phuoc Vinh, north-Northeast of Saigon in Vietnam's War Zone D on June 15, 1967. (AP Photo/Henri Huet, File)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gyvTV5OJ5E&feature=related William Morgan Hardman is interrogated by North Vietnamese military authorities in front of Hoan Kien Hospital in Hanoi, Vietnam on Aug. 24, 1967. Hardman, a U.S. pilot, was captured after his plane was shot down. (AP Photo) The address is muddy bunker and the mailman wears a flak vest as CPL. Jesse D. Hittson of Levelland, Texas, reaches out for his mail at the U.S. Marine Con Thien outpost two miles south of the demilitarized zone in South Vietnam on Oct. 4, 1967. (AP Photo/Kim Ki Sam). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8BPcNUQy-0&feature=related Rizal Avenue south end. How can I not recognize an old haunt. There are two more movie theaters on the same side as Ideal. I think one is Dalisay which shows Filipino movies only. The other I can not recall. I can name some of the movies I saw in those theaters...ReneR. General views of the destroyed montagnards of Dak son new life Hamlet, December 7, 1967 in Vietnam. Vietcong killed 114 of the villagers and wounded 47. (AP Photo) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1kzd-bdv2w&feature=related More than 12,000 U.S. Marines crowd into an outdoor amphitheater to watch comedian Bob Hope and Phil Crosby open Hope's USO Christmas Show tour at Da Nang, Vietnam, with Raquel Welch and singer Barbara McNair, left, Dec. 19, 1967. Crosby, wearing a wig, carries a "Make Love Not War" sign. (AP Photo) First Lt. Gary D. Jackson of Dayton, Ohio, carries a wounded South Vietnamese Ranger to an ambulance Feb. 6, 1968 after a brief but intense battle with the Viet Cong during the Tet Offensive near the National Sports Stadium in the Cholon section of Saigon. (AP Photo/Dang Van Phuoc)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntLsElbW9Xo&feature=list_related&playnext=1&list=MLGxdCwVVULXcnFGyBAz0W3zAwSes_ab_z In Alameda, bldg upper right became my appt. for one year. Best 10 of the Beatles http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l3Y4iBwQLo&feature=player_embedded#at=372 U.S. Air Force bombs create a curtain of flying shrapnel and debris barely 200 feet beyond the perimeter of South Vietnamese ranger positions defending Khe Sanh during the siege of the U.S. Marine base, March 1968. The photographer, a South Vietnamese officer, was badly injured when bombs fell even closer on a subsequent pass by U.S. planes. (AP Photo/ARVN, Maj. Nguyen Ngoc Hanh) Riverine assault boats, Operation of the Riverine Force of the U.S. 9th Division, glide along the My Tho River, an arm of the Mekong Delta near Dong Tam, 35 miles southwest of Saigon, Vietnam, March 15, 1968. (AP Photo) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw_4h07DUKk&feature=related With Rudy and Bob......AUGUST 1969 Woodstock Remembered http://bulletin.aarp.org/yourworld/articles/remembering_woodstock.html It’s hard to believe that 40 years ago, our generation made a profound statement against the establishment. The political upheavel and dramatic changes in the country was so well documented in the music of that period. The youth knew so well, that our country was going in the wrong path...against the grains of their elders, and then produced the most iconic countercultural event of the mid-20th century. Pfc. Juan Fordona of Puerto Rico, a First Cavalry Division trooper, shakes hands with U.S. Marine Cpl. James Hellebuick over barbed wire at the perimeter of the Marine base at Khe Sanh, South Vietnam, early April 1968. The meeting marked the first overland link-up between troops of the 1st Cavalry and the encircled Marine garrison at Khe Sanh. (AP Photo/Holloway) In Alameda, site of my weekend haunts with friends: During the Summer of Love, as many as 100,000 young people from around the world flocked to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, Berkeley and other San Francisco Bay Area cities to join in a popularized version of the hippie experience. Free food, free drugs and free love were available in Golden Gate Park, a Free Clinic (whose work continues today) was established for medical treatment, and a Free Store gave away basic necessities to anyone who needed them. The Summer of Love in 1967 also presented a recognition of great music during that summer. Although I don't consider myself a hippie, I did have friends who considered themselves a hippy. This period of time although many from the 60s generation did not recognize or support it, needs to be recognized because it was a part of the 60s generation history. Air Cavalry troops taking part in Operation Pegasus are shown walking around and watching bombing on a far hill line on April 14, 1968 at Special Forces Camp at Lang Vei in Vietnam. (AP Photo/Richard Merron) The lasting impact of the "hippies" was related to their political involvement, their demand for equal treatment of all races, their embracing of the feminist movement, their compassion for the indiginous and downtrodden people of the world, their early acceptance of homosexuality, their rejection of consumer culture, and their demand for a deeper understanding of man's place in the world. These hippies did not drop out. They changed american society in lasting and substantial ways. To falsely associate Leary and his idiotic catchphrase with the entire 60s' movement is at best a false dichotomy and at worst the result of a carefully crafted mainstream media propaganda campaign. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1rArjZ_z6c Banners of appreciation from the Vietnamese decorate the dock at Danang where a farewell ceremony was held by the Vietnamese Government for departing Marines of the 1st Battalion/9th Regiment, July 14, 1969. (AP Photo) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAUHglnkdjc&feature=related Dec 1969:Destination San Francisco....Yes, in life we all reach a crossroad sometime. We make painful decisions and take some risks as we pursue our dreams. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_-x2_hXC2g&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ChoOH3RAUA&feature=related Destination San Francisco. "If you're going to San Francisco,be sure to wear some flowers in your hair...If you're going to San Francisco,Summertime will be a love-in there" I remember my first walk/day here in the US. I came over in the late sixties, and was somewhat aware of the scenes, mostly was involved in search of a job. Funny, when we look back, we think, we squandered the times of our life when our hormones were in tune with our desires. I was single then, going to school in San Francisco and also here in Sacramento CSUS during those days really experienced the happening, although a little bit subdued due to work in the day time. That song forever imprinted in my mind "San Francisco" it became an instant hit and quickly transcended its original purpose by popularizing an idealized image of San Francisco. As the memories flicker down the memory lane, I wish to live back in the sixties with the images of the hills over the bay frozen in time. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKeXkhxiq6I&feature=related

THE TREES are in their autumn beauty, The woodland paths are dry, Under the October twilight the water Mirrors a still sky; Upon the brimming water among the stones Are nine-and-fifty swans. The nineteenth autumn has come upon me Since I first made my count; I saw, before I had well finished, All suddenly mount And scatter wheeling in great broken rings Upon their clamorous wings. I have looked upon these brilliant creatures, And now my heart is sore. All’s changed since I, hearing at twilight, The first time on this shore, The bell-beat of their wings above my head, Trod with a lighter tread. Unwearied still, lover by lover, They paddle in the cold, Companionable streams or climb the air; Their hearts have not grown old; Passion or conquest, wander where they will, Attend upon them still. But now they drift on the still water Mysterious, beautiful; Among what rushes will they build, By what lake’s edge or pool Delight men’s eyes, when I awake some day To find they have flown away?….WB Yeats     "Good weather all the week, but come the weekend the weather stinks. Springtime for birth, Summertime for growth; and all Seasons for dying. Ripening grapes in the summer sun - reason enough to plod ahead.  Springtime flows in our veins.  Beauty is the Mistress, the gardener Her salve.  A soul is colored Spring green.  Complexity is closer to the truth.  When the Divine knocks, don't send a prophet to the door.  All metaphors aside - only living beings rise up in the Springtime; dead beings stay quite lie down dead. Winter does not turn into Summer; ash does not turn into firewood - on the chopping block of time.  Fresh fruit from the tree - sweet summertime!  Gardens are demanding pets.  Shade was the first shelter.  One spring and one summer to know life's hope; one autumn and one winter to know life's fate. Somehow, someway, everything gets eaten up, someday.  Relax and be still around the bees.  Paradise and shade are close relatives on a summer day.  Absolutes squirm beneath realities.  The spiders, grasshoppers, mantis, and moth larva are all back:  the summer crowd has returned! To garden is to open your heart to the sky. Dirty fingernails and a calloused palm precede a Green Thumb."  -   Michael P. Garofalo     "Leaves drift softly earthward toward the grass Spring and summer blend from green to gold And so the seasons come full turn and pass Day follows day and each of us grows old. Somewhere there is a bright new shining day And as these seasons pace and turn We will live in joy complete and never say That for younger days our hearts still yearn." -   Corby Magnuson, "Seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells." -   John Keats "Between the dusk of a summer night And the dawn of a summer day, We caught at a mood as it passed in flight, And we bade it stoop and stay. And what with the dawn of night began With the dusk of day was done; For that is the way of woman and man, When a hazard has made them one. Arc upon arc, from shade to shine, The World went thundering free; And what was his errand but hers and mine -- The lords of him, I and she? O, it's die we must, but it's live we can, And the marvel of earth and sun Is all for the joy of woman and man And the longing that makes them one." -   William Ernest Henley,   "The season for enjoying the fullness of life -- partaking of the harvest, sharing the harvest with others, and reinvesting and saving portions of the harvest for yet another season of growth." The sun was about to set and  the light was going to be just wonderful. but just as it lights up the sky on its way down, it also lights up the rest of the land. Hurling its final rays across the landscape, where a lone farmer is planting rice in an open field,   2 A Russian boy cools himself off by standing in a fountain near the Kremlin in central Moscow on June 11, 2009 as summer temperatures began to make their way past 30 degrees celcius (86 farenheit). (YURI KADOBNOV/AFP/Getty Images) # 3 People practice yoga on a rocky crest filled with astronomical markers at the megalithic observatory of Kokino, Macedonia, soon after sunrise, early on June 21, 2009 -- the day of the summer solstice. The ancient astronomic observatory, about 80 kms northeast of Skopje, is more than 4,000 years old. Kokino includes special stone markers used to track the movement of Sun and Moon on the eastern horizon. (ROBERT ATANASOVSKI/AFP/Getty Images) # 4 The sun sets above the teepee field as music fans start to arrive at the Glastonbury Festival site at Worthy Farm, Pilton on June 24, 2009 in Glastonbury, Somerset, England. The gates opened for the first of the 140,000 music fans arriving, at what has become one of Europe's largest music festivals. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images) # 5 An Indian motor cyclist travels alongside a yellow taxi cab during a spell of monsoon rain in Kolkata on June 30, 2009. Heavy rains which fell in several areas of northern and eastern India brought respite to the scorching heat in previous days. (DESHAKALYAN CHOWDHURY/AFP/Getty Images) # BALD heads forgetful of their sins, Old, learned, respectable bald heads Edit and annotate the lines That young men, tossing on their beds, Rhymed out in love’s despair To flatter beauty’s ignorant ear. 6 Lightnings illuminate the night sky of Montevideo as a thunderstorm unfolds over the Uruguayan capital on July 5, 2009. (MARIANA SUAREZ/AFP/Getty Images) # All shuffle there; all cough in ink; All wear the carpet with their shoes; All think what other people think; All know the man their neighbour knows. Lord, what would they say Did their Catullus walk that way? 7 A screen shows a presentation to an audience of hundreds sitting in the grass of Brooklyn Bridge Park across from the Manhattan skyline during the "Movies With a View" outdoor screening series July 9, 2009 in New York City. Outdoor movies are a perennial summer pastime for New Yorkers, with festivals and showings put on in various neighborhoods of the city throughout the warm months. (Photo by Chris Hondros/Getty Images) #   8 Youths cool off in the swimming pool near the village of Milosevo, Kosovo, Serbia, on July 25, 2009 as the temperatures reached over 40 degrees celsius. (Armend Nimani/AFP/Getty Images) # 9 A row of wicker beach chairs remain empty at the beach near the nortern German town of Kuehlungsborn as dark clouds gather in the sky on July 25, 2009. A mix of sunshine and thunder storms with heavy rain fall make up the recent weather in Germany. (OLIVER LANG/AFP/Getty Images) # 10 A teenager attempts to use his skateboard to keep dry during an afternoon thunderstorm on July 27, 2009 in New York, New York. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images) # 11 A man walks along a street after a heavy storm in Shanghai on July 30, 2009. Torrential rain and landslides have killed at least 66 people and left another 66 missing in south and central China since the beginning of June, state media reported on July 30. (PHILIPPE LOPEZ/AFP/Getty Images) # 12 A man tries to open a beach umbrella on July, 30 2009 on a deserted beach in Deauville, northern France. (MYCHELE DANIAU/AFP/Getty Images) # 13 Under a slate grey sky a fishing boat sits in the sand of Morcambe Bay on July 31, 2009 in Morecambe, England. Many seaside traders are seeing a slow start across Britain due to the inclement weather. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images) # 14 People look out to see and the gathering rain clouds as they walk on the beach on August 4 2009 in Weston-Super-Mare, England. Many popular UK tourist attractions are hoping that the wet summer weather will improve to take advantage of the large number of people who have chosen to take their holidays or 'staycations' at home this year. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images) # 15 The sun rises over the town of Vineyard Haven August 8, 2009 in Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts on the island of Martha's Vineyard. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) # 16 A young boy climbs up from the water after trying to catch baitfish August 7, 2009 in Menemsha, Massachusetts on the island of Martha's Vineyard. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) # 17 A hula dancer sits on the dashboard of an automobile as crowds line up to order seafood at The Bite, a popular destination, August 7, 2009 in Menemsha, Massachusetts on the island of Martha's Vineyard. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) # 18 A young girls fishes as the sun sets August 7, 2009 in Menemsha, Massachusetts on the island of Martha's Vineyard. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) # 19 A lawn in Ludwigsburg, Germany, is littered with balls of hail shortly after a thunderstorm on Thursday, May 21, 2009. (AP Photo/Thomas Kienzle) # 20 A man relaxes in a hammock at the sea bridge of Kellenhusen at the Baltic Sea, northern Germany, as temperatures reach 19 degrees Celsius (66.2 Fahrenheit) on Monday, May 25, 2009. (AP Photo/Heribert Proepper) # 21 Pre-monsoon clouds hover above, as girls carry water in Ahmadabad, India, Tuesday, June 2, 2009. (AP Photo/Ajit Solanki) # 22 Christian Jones of Seattle relaxes in the sun at Gas Works Park during a second day of record temperatures Thursday, June, 4, 2009 in Seattle. Jones, said he wishes every day can be like this in the city that has a reputation for rain and clouds. The official temperature in Seattle reached 89 degrees, one degree higher than the previous June 4 record set in 1989. (AP Photo/Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Joshua Trujillo) # 23 Children play football as clouds hover above them in Bhubaneswar, India, Tuesday, June 9, 2009. (AP Photo/Biswaranjan Rout) # 24 A young man jumps into the waters of Lake Chiemsee near Chieming, southern Germany, in front of an Alps panorama during sunny weather with temperatures of 25 degrees Cesius (77 degrees Fahrenheit) on Sunday, June 14, 2009. (AP Photo/Christof Stache) #   26 A red sky at dawn is a signal to mariners that the weather changing for the worse, prompting lobsterman Bruce Steeves of Raymond, Maine, to get an early start as he loads traps onto his boat, Thursday, June 18, 2009, in Portland, Maine. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty) # 28 # A small boat is seen amidst rain and fog as hurricane Andres arrives in the Pacific resort city of Manzanillo, Mexico on Tuesday June 23, 2009. Andres strengthened into the Pacific season's first hurricane as it flooded homes, toppled trees and killed at least one person on its way up Mexico's southwestern coast. (AP Photo/Miguel Tovar) # A large waterspout forms above the St. Johns River in Jacksonville, Fla. on Friday afternoon, June 26, 2009. The spout dissipated as it reached the other side of the river. The Fuller Warren Bridge is seen in the foreground. (AP Photo/The Florida Times-Union, Will Dickey) # 31 In this picture taken Saturday, June 27, 2009, storm clouds gather and lightning strikes over the Houses of Parliament in London during a break in the hot weather. (AP PhotoPhoto/Lewis Whyld/PA) # 32 Jeanette Eggleston dries off seats as the start of a baseball game between the Washington Nationals and Florida Marlins is delayed due to bad weather at Land Shark Stadium in Miami Monday, June 29, 2009. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky) # Yesterday as I drove from my supermarket, a jeep loaded with teenagers whipped by on their way to Folsom Lake. I noticed their scantily attire, so I knew their fun beach destination. Summer is almost here and those kids gave me a flashback. They may not be surfing but images of California beaches full of surfers came back vividly. Oh! days of youth, nodding to another  instance of daydream,  thinking of  past vacations in Hawaii . Many popular surfing destinations, such as Hawaii, California, Florida, Rio de Janeiro, Ireland, Australia and Costa Rica, have surf schools and surf camps that offer lessons. Surf camps for beginners and intermediates are multi-day lessons that focus on surfing fundamentals. They are designed to take new surfers and help them become proficient riders. All-inclusive surf camps offer overnight accommodations, meals, lessons and surfboards. Most surf lessons begin by instructors pushing students into waves on longboards. The longboard is considered the ideal surfboard for learning, due to the fact it has more paddling speed and stability than shorter boards. Funboards are also a popular shape for beginners as they combine the volume and stability of the longboard with the manageable size of a smaller surfboard. 1 SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - JANUARY 04: A surfer performs an ariel maneuver in large swell at Bondi Beach January 4, 2008 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images) # 2 EHUKAI BEACH, HAWAII - DECEMBER 11: Rob Machado of the USA wipes out during the trials of the Xbox Pipeline Masters at the Banzai Pipeline on the North Shore of Oahu in Hawaii, USA on December 11, 2002. (Photo by Grant Ellis/Tostee/Getty Images) # 3 Fabio Gouveia of Brazil in action during the 1999 Rip Curl Pro Surfing Championships from Bells Beach, Victoria, Australia. Jack Atley /Allsport #   4 A surfer jumps in the sea at the beach in Durban on 16 June, 2010 as the 2010 World Cup hosted by South Africa continues through July 11. (ARIS MESSINIS/AFP/Getty Images) # 5 A surfer tries to catch the early waves at sunrise on the North Pier Beach in Durban on June 25, 2010. (RAJESH JANTILAL/AFP/Getty Images) # 6 Australian Matt Wilkinson performs during the third round of Tahiti's surf event, part of the ASP world tour on September 1, 2010 in Teahupoo Tahiti, French Polynesia. (GREGORY BOISSY/AFP/Getty Images) # 7 VICTORIA BAY, SOUTH AFRICA - JUNE 11: Surfers walk across the rocks to reach the ocean for a sunrise surf on June 11, 2010 in Victoria Bay, South Africa. (Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images) # 8 VICTORIA BAY, SOUTH AFRICA - JUNE 11: A surfer watches the waves from the breakwall at Victoria Beach on June 11, 2010 in Victoria Bay, South Africa. (Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images) # 9 VICTORIA BAY, SOUTH AFRICA - JUNE 11: A surfer rides a wave during an early morning session on June 11, 2010 in Victoria Bay, South Africa. (Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images) # 10 HUNTINGTON BEACH, CA - AUGUST 07: Cory Lopez executes an off the lip during the Hurley U.S. Open of Surfing on August 7, 2010 in Huntington Beach, California. (Photo by Jeff Gross/Getty Images) # 11 Australian Chris Davidson performs during the third round of Tahiti's surf event, part of the ASP world tour on September 1, 2010 in Teahupoo Tahiti, French Polynesia. (GREGORY BOISSY/AFP/Getty Images) # 12 US Andy Irons competes during the final of the Billabong Pro Tahiti 2010 surf event, part of the ASP world tour on September 3, 2010 in Teahupoo Tahiti, French Polynesia. Irons won the event. (GREGORY BOISSY/AFP/Getty Images) # 13 A surfer enters the water before tribal elder Mati Waiya from the Chumash Nation conducts the dedication ceremony for the iconic Malibu Surfrider Beach to become the first "World Surfing Reserve" (WSR), in Malibu on October 9, 2010. The WSR program, inspired by UNESCO's World Heritage Sites, helps the surfing community to identify and preserve it's surfing heritage, raise environmental awareness and issues at important surf breaks. (MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images) #   Combing the shores of Lake Seloton for photographs, I was greeted by a dear old friend who I often meet during my travels. Let me explain. You see, reflections are one of my best friends when shooting at twilight. They can multiply the ebbing colors of a twilight sky and brighten-up my compositions at a time when most light and color have left the land. To be able to continue shooting long after the sun has set, reflections are great friends indeed.       14 POLZEATH, ENGLAND - JANUARY 20: Surfers brave the cold to take advantage of the Cornish winter waves on January 20, 2011 in Polzeath, England. Improved wetsuit materials and technology has meant that surfing has now become a year-round sport for places like Cornwall, with many dedicated surfers able to take advantage of the better waves and less crowded breaks the winter offers. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images) #   16 POLZEATH, ENGLAND - JANUARY 20: A surfer braves the cold to take advantage of the Cornish winter waves on January 20, 2011 in Polzeath, England. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images) #     Philippines: The best time to photograph Batanes is when the weather is bad and unpredictable. Why?We're in Rakuh-e-Payaman in Batanes. It's a clearing-of-sorts atop a series of gently rolling hills on one end of the island. Here the wind blows with abandon, gasping to almost howling, under a grayish sky with an intermittent drizzle. Just like my vantage point, on the horizon is Mt. Iraya under a shadow cast by a canopy of fast-moving clouds. And every so often, sunlight would pierce through, momentarily lighting up the terra firma. These shafts create ripples of light that race across the shadowed landscape, lending character and drama, transforming a mediocre scene into something much more interesting. Now you don't get that effect when the weather is all nice and sunny!   17 POLZEATH, ENGLAND - JANUARY 20: A surfer braves the cold to take advantage of the Cornish winter waves on January 20, 2011 in Polzeath, England. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images) # We all have our comfort zones, fortresses beyond which we rarely stray. Could we be missing something? We were on Badian Island off the western coast of Cebu, in a small cottage that looks out over the Badian Channel. The waterway itself is narrow and so shallow that you can literally walk across at low tide. In the distance is the Mantalongan, an imposing mountain range rising to nearly a thousand feet above sea level. The sun rose from behind those mountain tops today, an experience that will be hard to forget, followed by a simmering mist that hovered over the water's surface all morning. The view is as beautiful as it is calming. We're tempted to stay in the cool cozy indoors, sit back, and just enjoy the grand view. But the world looks very different up-close. To see the world, we need to step out of our comfort zones, into the new, into the unknown, and into destiny. Who knows what tomorrow brings? After all, we're much like what they said about ships in a harbor: they're safe there, but that's not what ships are made for 18 AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND - FEBRUARY 12: A surfer makes good use of the waves during the Day of Giants Surfboat race regatta at Piha beach on February 12, 2011 in Auckland, New Zealand. (Photo by Phil Walter/Getty Images) # 19 [iptc:caption] # 20 SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - MARCH 12: Beau Foster of Australia competes in the Open Trials during the Boost Mobile Surfsho at Bondi Beach on March 12, 2011 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images) # 21 SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - MARCH 13: Owen Wright of Australia competes in the final of the Boost Mobile Surfsho at Bondi Beach on March 13, 2011 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images) # 22 SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - MARCH 13: Jack Freestone of Australia competes in the heats of the Boost Mobile Surfsho at Bondi Beach on March 13, 2011 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images) # 23 This photo taken on February 7, 2011 shows surf boards piled up at the Ha'atafu Beach Resort on Tongatapu in Tonga. There are no signs pointing the way to Tonga's oldest surf resort, only a palm-fringed road riddled with potholes that presents many blind turns for the unwary traveller. (NEIL SANDS/AFP/Getty Images) # 24 SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - MAY 01: A bodyboarder rides a wave at Mackenzies Bay on May 1, 2011 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images) # 25 SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - MAY 01: A surfer rides a wave at Mackenzies Bay on May 1, 2011 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images) # Philippines: The best time to photograph Batanes is when the weather is bad and unpredictable. Why?We're in Rakuh-e-Payaman in Batanes. It's a clearing-of-sorts atop a series of gently rolling hills on one end of the island. Here the wind blows with abandon, gasping to almost howling, under a grayish sky with an intermittent drizzle. Just like my vantage point, on the horizon is Mt. Iraya under a shadow cast by a canopy of fast-moving clouds. And every so often, sunlight would pierce through, momentarily lighting up the terra firma. These shafts create ripples of light that race across the shadowed landscape, lending character and drama, transforming a mediocre scene into something much more interesting. Now you don't get that effect when the weather is all nice and sunny!   17 POLZEATH, ENGLAND - JANUARY 20: A surfer braves the cold to take advantage of the Cornish winter waves on January 20, 2011 in Polzeath, England. (Photo by Matt Cardy/Getty Images) # We all have our comfort zones, fortresses beyond which we rarely stray. Could we be missing something? We were on Badian Island off the western coast of Cebu, in a small cottage that looks out over the Badian Channel. The waterway itself is narrow and so shallow that you can literally walk across at low tide. In the distance is the Mantalongan, an imposing mountain range rising to nearly a thousand feet above sea level. The sun rose from behind those mountain tops today, an experience that will be hard to forget, followed by a simmering mist that hovered over the water's surface all morning. The view is as beautiful as it is calming. We're tempted to stay in the cool cozy indoors, sit back, and just enjoy the grand view. But the world looks very different up-close. To see the world, we need to step out of our comfort zones, into the new, into the unknown, and into destiny. Who knows what tomorrow brings? After all, we're much like what they said about ships in a harbor: they're safe there, but that's not what ships are made for 18 AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND - FEBRUARY 12: A surfer makes good use of the waves during the Day of Giants Surfboat race regatta at Piha beach on February 12, 2011 in Auckland, New Zealand. (Photo by Phil Walter/Getty Images) # 19 [iptc:caption] # 20 SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - MARCH 12: Beau Foster of Australia competes in the Open Trials during the Boost Mobile Surfsho at Bondi Beach on March 12, 2011 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images) # 21 SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - MARCH 13: Owen Wright of Australia competes in the final of the Boost Mobile Surfsho at Bondi Beach on March 13, 2011 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images) # 22 SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - MARCH 13: Jack Freestone of Australia competes in the heats of the Boost Mobile Surfsho at Bondi Beach on March 13, 2011 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images) # 23 This photo taken on February 7, 2011 shows surf boards piled up at the Ha'atafu Beach Resort on Tongatapu in Tonga. There are no signs pointing the way to Tonga's oldest surf resort, only a palm-fringed road riddled with potholes that presents many blind turns for the unwary traveller. (NEIL SANDS/AFP/Getty Images) # 24 SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - MAY 01: A bodyboarder rides a wave at Mackenzies Bay on May 1, 2011 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images) # 25 SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - MAY 01: A surfer rides a wave at Mackenzies Bay on May 1, 2011 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images) # 26 A surfer sits on a surfboard during the Malibu Longboard Invitational of the Ocean Festival Series in Malibu, California in July of 1997. Harry How/Allsport # 27 HOSSEGOR, FRANCE - OCTOBER 5: Kelly Slater of the USA in action during his victory over Paul Canning of South Africa at the Quiksilver Pro at Hossegor, France on October 5, 2002. Slater advances to the quater finals where he takes on Australian surfer Luke Hitchings. (Photo by Grant Ellis/Getty Images) # 28 A surfer carves the wave at the Jaws Tow-In World Cup in Pe'' Ahi, Maui, Hawaii in January of 2002. Donald Miralle/Getty Images # Megan Abubo of the USA on her way to victory over Melanie Redman of Australia in the final during the Roxy Fiji Surf Jam at Cloudbreak, Tavarua, Fiji in May of 2001. Allsport Australia/ALLSPORT # We were in Busuanga, Palawan, on a banca speeding towards Cayangan Lake on the island of Coron. Half an hour later found us in a lagoon at the foot of an imposing wall of limestone. Up a steep flight of steps, we eventually huffed-and-puffed our way to a look-out point with an expansive view of the islands. Then it's down a jagged trail until we descend onto the shores of an emerald-colored sea. Nice, very nice. And the brackish seawater? It's less than salty because of an an active underwater freshwater spring. Cayangan is, after all, a sea lake completely enclosed by limestone cliffs. Along the water's edge, there's a faint echo that gently envelopes you, like whispering waves inside a seashell. And the water? The color is alive... my photographs fail... this place is enchanted... put it on your bucket list 29   30 The Billabong Pro, Teahupoo, Tahiti May 8-19 2001. Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) world number 13 Michael Lowe (Port Kembla, NSW, AUS) flies off the back of a wave and claims his victory after winning his heat against Paul Canning (SAFR) in round three of the Billabong Pro at Teahupoo, Tahiti. Allsport Australia/ALLSPORT # 31 A surfer rides a wave in South Africa in April of 1997. Mike Hewitt /Allsport