We travelled to Manila for arrangements with a recruitment office. And we found out the agency demanded a requirement that was never specified beforehand by a distant relative who persuaded us to go. We were surprised an dismayed when being much already away, upon realizing that the barrio folk's fuzziness about an "exciting endeavor" has just sank into a dubious situation after being won to accede on a journey to purportedly work abroad. Although I had a reliable job before, I was still only making a start as a youth that a beginner can only usually come up with gains short enough in comparison to what has arisen to be addressed later. My Mother had already became more inactive and indigent enough, coupled with my uncle to be too just selfishly focused of his own cares that I felt I was solely left to navigate for my own welfare alone. In our blood relations circle, no one had extended more generosity that uplifted our well-being than Aunt Trining who already passed away. When it was understood the said undertaking to be wholly a family affair - with all the shortcomings that eventually cropped up, it became an imminent distress for us who felt duped into the venture, more so when the schemers tended to become more evasive and demanding. Juaning Tan, the father of the female recruiter, who summoned the poor folks in our barrio, of whom we were either closely or distantly related, exerted much persuasion for a better life on us - striving men, who just tended to easily gave way in such kind of situation. And it just made us more wanting and found ourselves more prone to indiscretions. And by time constraints, it made us languishing in pennilessness that drew us into the hands of manipulative individuals and ushered us much further away from the originally stated purpose.

It landed me to various places and forced me to connect with person's on shaky arrangement, a degenerative far cry from the status of the job I left behind. The people involved in this digressive trend was purposely adamant in the intentional omission thus created, as the situation descended toward greater complexities, pitting me against adverse characters, such that I solitarily faced in a very intrusive circumstances. Life went on in uncertainty, ushering me away from my chosen calling until such time I was being pushed to the extent of insolubility. To have attended only a brief time in college, and although I had already acquired enough skills to boot, to resurrect the culture and air of reciprocity that burgeoned between us and the people of the Tacloban Coca-cola Plant, of which I temporarily forgone to acquiesce to the venture, would be anymore dim.I mainly quit school in light of preconception of having to further my career by alternative means workable within the given setting in the Central Visayas region. But the dashed possibility of returning to Coke and thus to the region itself shattered all projected expectations. Whereas, injury has already been set that created a condition to dwell and be beholden to it. How would the Coca-cola people react if I return empty-handed while having persisted of leaving them which was also a great opportunity? I explained my case in earnest and assured them everything will be alright. But as things turned out differently, however, it would only appear of me to be ridiculous and stupid to lose their trust if I return a failure. It thus only deemed proper for me to go on that it may overshadow the mess undergone and keep the promise alive. It may also be thought of having encountered conquerable, given such a resourceful individual, an awareness to make me be obliged to press ahead. Going back a failure indeed, projects a dismal character to sink in gloom and thus to become irrelevant before them, that it had arisen the call bounce back and be perceived as I had been. However, there had not been indications so far that the way I was being beset by complexities showed signs of a abating. Of late, we were stricken with dilemma when uncertainty and want befell upon us: whether to go back limping deluded and take it having the guilty to have their day, or persevere with what's left of me to start from scratch.

While I was still in my home province of in the Barrio of Balud, .y mother referred me to Jesse Madriaga who bragged of his clout being a well-placed, Manila oriented resident who could be approached once I would have needed help. He is the brother of our barrio chairman back home, who is also our distant relative. Jesse, who has a commercial-artist son named Mike, hinted as being someone who could be sought after just in case problem arises. And the Barrio chairman himself was an habitual Manila itinerant who is flashy in their family's conspicuousness at any family gathering events, though nonchalant enough to care about anything as much as being showy in such occasions. Juaning Tan, a cousin of the Madriagas would take upon grandstanding over people about the nature of my skills just to further his recruitment intentions, jus as despicable as it is unnerving in its unseemliness. Then by degrees, the trend began to show its real nature - it was during our temporary stay at the recruiter's apartment, a new house somewhere under construction where we were called up to help build that an instance of obvious exploitation became clearer. My mother got the courage to travel from the Visayas to try to see the situation for herself, but lamely though, and so to be of no significant consequences. On one occasion, when we rode together in the recruiter's car, and they, flaunting a lavish habits - a kind of air that did not just aptly applied to us, seemingly became irrelevant in such bad habitual gesture doesn't rightly fall in place. The situation placed us, job applicants in position to force us to help build their house free of labor. Days went on and we grew tired, beset by hunger, and placed us under the spell of their whim. We were admonished from time to time as short of the requisites to meet their approval, such issues unworkable to let it proceed. At one instance, I was told, they exemplified the success of one in our group to insinuate their veracity, out of more than 20 persons in us, and be bestirred to be fond of raising my vocation as a laughingstock when, at length, the situation was getting worse. Their house finally completed but to no positive results to our plight, only annoying insinuations and grandstanding I a perverted display of lethargy that mocked us in the face. Mike Marriage also turned out to be elusively sarcastic and deprecatingly hackneyed alibis, a complete turnaround of what his father assured us of him. And in a seemingly deceptive guise of spontaneity of a transition of of our plight gone awry, we were called upon to finish a job for another relative's business establishment who also found the opportunity to further the anomaly. The gradual pace of pointlessness took its toll proceeding to a more disturbing episodes. Later on, I stayed with my mother in a house of her friend, her provincemates, but hounded by futility as we always were, things became only more sour to come our falling off later that finally came to part our ways in a bitterly and unceremonious results. I didn't expect my mother to follow me to Manila anyway, in such an already frail health when it could not be of any help at all, being only driven by erratic impulses. And when she was finally back home, I vowed to face all the troubles, alone if need be - which is actually the case for the isolation of its nature in every respect, and this without the strain of delusions and empty innuendos, when indeed nobody understands about my plight that was accelerating for the worst. To cap it all, I could even do without a relative and swore to shun them altogether, a non relative would have been much more palatable. I resolved to live up to my fate for every possible means of my resources and energy.

When the duration of my earlier embarrassments elapsed and enabled me to look back and take a glimpse much more objectively, I perceived myself of having to face a new set of unnecessary burden as I pressed ahead, yet still, came to be more aware that this somber goings-on is not worth a person's notice who could realize for a due rescue. Who would care anyway, to lift a nerve about an impoverished struggling nonentity mired only in some erroneous indiscretions. When it was still not a ripe option to abandon our group altogether, I resolved to find employment in every possible, fastest way at best. And I vowed never to return to the province without arriving to a condition that would enable me to sort it out with the wrongdoers.

By turn of of events, it so happened for me to find recommendations if employment from an uncle of the recruiter himself, occasioned in isolated and separate case of development. For although we have stumbled upon him it did not refer whatsoever to the purpose of our endeavor, only spur of thought of the moment that gained further traction. He is a much more influential, richer Manila resident, and seemingly a much more kinder benefactor, though the ensuing thread of circumstances ushered me to a more complex, disturbing situation more than I could rein in to steer toward a right psychological track. He ought to play a role of a kind godfather to our provincemates and had been lending a helping hand to people with no relation to him who also sought their betterment in life. Yet I could only keep mum about him being a sibling of my tormentor - they are distant worlds anyway, he being a lawyer detached from the mundane fuss of his province and so consumed in high level affairs of government that such trifles will be not worth riveting to his notice. Moreover, it would not be enough to put up as a basis weighing matters to be a parameter relative to another if a person's status bear the qualities to be considered independently. As he was holding a sensitive government position, I thought it was considerable relief being accorded attentions in which every other matters on the sidelines could only be treated with objectivity in spite of their actual kinship that could entail a certain degree of dilemma. Nevertheless, semblance of welfare determines and offers a basis of assessment for worthiness. He was a 75-year-old director of the Legislative Service of the Department of Budget and Management, who incidentally went on a vacation, for a second occasion, this time in my absence - I was also visiting some other place in the Visayas, to Matutinao and innocently noticed a painting in my Aunt Trining's house that he only lately learned as my work, as he happened to ask me while making speculation about my personal history. I saw them - when they first came, their family, early in youth as a flamboyant and lavish vacationer on the sleepy and rustic coastal Barrio of the place of my growth when I was still a reticent and curious boy. The awareness made my presence a little bit stir an awkward air lest it would cause to delve deeper about myself while being cautious from the fact that his brother committed a palpable omission while I happen to stumble upon their lot and muddle our concurrence, though he has nothing to do with it all along. One day, we rode in his car in our company early on, and we happened to pass by a cylindrical concrete huge water tank, in Murphy district, Quezon City, while it was being decorated with murals, and I said to him, "There, that was once like my work at Coca-cola, I was a contractor then. "Really? Alright, you indeed are, but it's better for you to have found a reliable and safer job right now, that's too dangerous, your life would be literally at stake." He replied. In comparison though, to weigh the essence of the situation in my previous work from what replaces it now, supposedly for betterment and relief, is if the former a "superficial prick of the senses" while for the latter, that led to chain of events, the culmination of which befell me "shudders and somehow unstring my whole nervous system." What's left behind as pronounced to be replaced for the better is actually an omission. I had been already a newly employed on contractual basis on such occasion upon passing by that tower for daily work, as it called to mind the visions of my old job at the coke. Any apparitions reminiscent of my work at the company always promptly enkindle the thought of my short but spirited past there. I never felt giddiness in the similar height of 20 stories of that tower, we never could, when passion and thirst for struggle supervenes to fill the void for the sense of emptiness, that wearing safety belts had become an encumbrance. It too, changes the state of mind, to be at peace with itself, while working in elevated levels and staring down the troubles of the world, if only temporarily. I was innocently charged with drive to work, work, work and nothing but work alone. Unlike of the Coke, the tower at Murphy was being decorated with designs not familiar as lent to given images nationwide. But of me, I set myself on a scaffold working in what was already a popularly conspicuous ad, so that my every effort entailing routine performances is solely held as a repetition that I did over and over again, and consider it a means to discharge my passions, devoid of doubt and faltering, that what mattered most was to become consumed in concentration and backbreaking toil, self confidence and sense of peace. The Murphy tower indeed reminded me of a short but memorable episode of the immediate past that now has charged me with equal brevity and courage for all the odds ahead of me. I was already temporarily staying at the house of this DBM legal director Salvador Faustino Tan in those times when "Chong Badoy," as he was fondly called in Balud Capoocan, Leyte, the Barrio where we were recruited from, recommended and helped expedite the processing of my employment in such department in Malacañang. It was while I stayed at his house that marked the introductory stage of my life in government. They treated me as member of the family and became a conspicuous company of Chong Badoy anywhere he goes, either officially or unofficially. To their relief and gratitude, it was when they saw it for themselves and discover my drawings to be too good for his offsprings' school projects. I also painted in oil the family portrait of the married members, discovering too the perennial art materials I always possess could be expedient to the best services I could make in return for their generosity. And it surprised them seeing such a kind of person having uncommon manifestation of an artistically inclined. The entire family, educated and well-to-do as they were, too, for each of their kind of profession, and in spite of my having reached only a second year of college, my stride could not be as much alienable to them as for the more grateful they could be about the rarity of my vocation - they seemed to assume. The Legal director had in time, learned to treat things about referring on matters that haphazardly touched issues concerning the fine arts. Anyway, I was a U_ student myself, of a school that excels on every field of learning but the training of artists. Yet notwithstanding the brief, unfinished formal education I was already a self-taught painter myself early on. It was only a given chance that I happened to know these people if ever it has made an indelible imprint in my life, past or lately. I should have rubbed shoulders artists in Cebu otherwise, but fate decreed I had to be landed into these places, putting me in a necessity to seek for the continuance of the development of my career, in whatever a way. Even if I had stopped my studies in school, my success as an artist in the Visayas could have already been secured, but now that I have trodden away, I had yet to see what consequences it may bring when I would be mingling with non-artists as I formally assume to lead a life in government. Various ways had to be tried anyway, as what creative artists would do to chance upon unique results, I surmised. I had also conjectured that to tread upon a common and beaten track does not take the departure far enough to chart and discover new things, and so to altogether go differently, wherever, - it was my initial postulate, it might also be a right way if it would usher toward an artistic revolution. The early periods of my employment at the DBM and the mere realities that goes with it, however, seized me with a mixture of foreboding and hope, out of seeming uncertainty and of what my youthful drive and convictions could deliver against all odds, foreboding because of the complex realities I was about to descend into with only the given personal background, and even just only as a struggling one, and hope, because the standard and way of life came to a level that it might just take few more steps to reach the right place. Yet it never took positive weight and sense of relief to have come to be involved in such a work setting, only ambiguous presumption of the future, that tilts between the beacon of wanton dissolution and wistful expectations. In an atmosphere situated in a particularly refined, cultivated class of people, I would be navigating in a lonely sea of strange, and on some cases, unfriendly and uncooperative individuals. Whereas, conversely, it was just pure pleasure working as an artist even if it could still not have paid off. The nature of work here is remote and has nothing to do with my vocation, but in a necessity to find a way and pave a way through, entities overlaps and make their rounds in self-serving fashion. There can be no artists to spring the straightforward way, maybe the setting could lend indirect advantages. Most people were accountants, economists and lawyers as what a Budget Management is all about, but edging myself over in a different background to engage in them, will be seemingly a devious act, for to normally "assimilate" with them in such a situation will require guile to live up to it. But then, to weigh for the pros, the path could also be favorable to artists academically, being accessible to books in an intellectual atmosphere, though the cons misleadingly lie on the nature of work setting itself that will gradually eat up to it through time.

There was still attentions he imparted at work, and considerations were being accorded by S.F. Tan himself on me, in reference to and on the awareness of my career every time matters are raised that touches upon art. Although S.F. Tan is a lawyer, he evinced a considerable regard to the degree of my ability, even if it is only scarcely applicable to the mundane Legal office's functions. He took pains to extend such complimentary gestures for a day-to-day progress even as simple artwork in office matters makes little significance if only to strengthen ties. Where the main activity is comprised much by intellectuals, and where it also grows and nurture their kind of field, it also offers to burgeon from sense of values derivable from it for a different field that I had yet to carve for my own. The intellectual stimulation in the air partly contributes a kind of education expedient for any diverse end, as I was still in developmental stage while broadening a pertinent knowledge. I took my sense of value, even as it added to cause for me to linger on account of having to move in that interaction of people that entails a feasibility for a desired growth. And S F. Tan extended such a copious generosity to help me uplifted, even just for an ordinary employee as a start, in a government agency directly under the President within Malacañang grounds. Even if somewhat technically divergent from my previous experience, this job, with guidance and assistance of S.F. Tan regarding my stamp in the assumed grounds, my presence was perceived and welcomed as borne with some significance, being initiated of my introduction to people with skill that is not found in their lot. He made me a Sr. Utility Man directly under him officially, though this only posed as formality in the actual reciprocity that we embraced, and I was very well aware that short of these leverages to hold, I would have no more excuses why I will still spend more time there, but look for my luck elsewhere.

Meanwhile, the twist of fate for me to have stumbled upon S.F. Tan's lot was a defining moment of my life: not only that my success was already secured had I stayed put in the Visayas; in the extent of inexplicable suffering and terrible consumption in government if otherwise had been made to spend for my energy and soul on any other Manila capers, could have produced some palpable and materially rewarding results.

As time went on however, and the progress seemingly carried on normally and smoothly, I took the opportunity to initiate randomly on rendering simple official jobs viable to an artist's scope of capabilities. And then ironically, there came the necessity to bolster my trustworthiness and their confidence on me in the DBM when the administrative office sought my certificate of good moral character, of which my school promptly acceded upon my request, even complimenting so far as wishing me good luck, though as for me, it would have been moot when I never cared for any trustworthiness and integrity whatsoever in relation to them after all. Still, my personal manifestations, in S.F. Tan's guidance, made an imprint in the DBM according to the worth and value he insinuated and acknowledged. And then the progress and development shall find its proper place later in an orderly and harmonious step of possessing the prerogative to stamp on the assumed ground, which made me more involved, entwined and endeared within the organization.

As S.F. Tan saw my conspicuous work at the house of my aunt in Matutinao as I already said, it caught his fancy in light of my origin and the now evident personal calling, regarding the fact that the culture of blood relations between us relatives raised it to his notice, it added the spur in him to extend enough attentions to guide me in the DBM. His offsprings, surprised too to know I was from the school mentioned, that somewhat stirred their curiosity more than more than I could have ordinarily sized up, when school standards goes within their comparable levels, it became an eye-opener for them of late how to behave while having been only seen me long ago as a country boy. The Tan family mostly grew in Tacloban and Manila, and it was on my first encounter with them in Matutinao when they were already regarded as an affluent family long before my early youth. To have come up in the present consciousness about us, as regards to the distant past, seems to have only been a dream, when we now stand together reckoning how it came to be with tell-tale coincidences. For my upcoming struggle now presented himself as reminder of what I was molded from that had to deal to which trend it heads, that is to say, smacked of great complexity as I was about to work and try to get along with people dealing with budgetary matters with my religious devotion to a different career I have cherished.

Be that as it may, even with S. F. Tan's empathy and manifestations of good faith, I could not still feel any sense of lasting relief for having stumbled into DBM's lot, more so when he died. Yet even when he lived, I could still not fathom how long I could have fared well, having no obvious opportunities to make DBM a stepping stone. My assumption into the way was just akin to having found a place that requires the need to veil my sense of identity, to masquerade for the most opportune way utilizable on the spot. From there, I got the chance to ruminate for all ambitions, yet only confined to the limitations of the reality I was in; where I could only dilly-dally round and round to nowhere, riveted to their motley and agitated atmosphere. What I entered into made a mark on the psyche wrought wrought with mundane sensations of its atmosphere and begotten corresponding state of mind of which I eventually sported on the way. There will be methods to make things go, but the basic nature stays as a prime component to blend with other elements and form new dimensions. Entrenched as I was by the vigour and effervescence of life of my personal history that shaped the nature of my character, a new experience it will undergo makes no influence to change it, though it will deform it. How strong an influence to deliver an impact does not actually tilt toward changing into something like it is from what is already a hardened entity. It can not replace a foundation of character as gradually come into being throughout tender times, only dilute it. And as for me, given the career choices it has come to be adopted, it was decided long ago, and now too late to begin again

The matter with S.F. Tan was just a manifestations of a downward trend as for what's laid ahead only led to a plane of reality that runs conflict to the subject where uncertainty and entanglement in differences points to the enormity of the odds that called upon to measure one's mettle beyond the bounds of artistic aspirations. As I hinted before, I ought to embrace art more of a pleasure than a struggle, for art practice rightly achieved quenches the soul with feelings of relief whereas when true state of things gradually comes into play, work situation doubled down it's challenge while seemingly doesn't end up drawing beneficial results. Paces of events at the DBM took a turning point when S.F Tan died two years into my stint. Whereas before his demise, I could not discern any scruple against anything - any inherent nature had not just been noticable going under his shadow, as my characteristics is cast behind his general stride that supervenes and to where attentions is basically turned. A diverse nature of existence can also be shrouded and taken in tow by that constitute the mainstream. After his death though, when it lost something to be overshadowed from, the makeshift cover undone, it brought to expose the true state of things. Humorous flattery soon tended toward inquisitive sensitivities that verges on distrust, as an estranged plain stride directly engage with "unlike-minded-people". At first, I had times with them being an object of praise and appreciative esteem, especially in being conspicuous while performing liaison functions from office to office. As I went on though, when it came to make no concrete positive step to show substance in being connected to them and elevate my status as of the normal ascent in their career, they began to be skeptical about the trustworthiness of my character. Still, I would facilitate cajoling them myself with pure nonsense and trifles and inflate their ego to dampen the intrusive ennui that gradually pesters. Or I would just simply display an air of straightforward sincerity and plain toil in discharging the duties of my given work. This approach anyway is deemed to be ineffectual for the purpose of continuity for what end it may bring. However much energy involved, it projects a picture that which slights, when the efforts cast would only prove to be inimical, purely working for no pronounced, far-reaching reassurances, that in the long run, generates exasperating consequences. In awkward situations when they feel aggrieved as if "being pushed against the wall" and stir them into a vigilant mode, their voices speak as one as if whose rights are the one infringed upon. And rumors and hearsay churn around the halls if DBM with people abuzz with intrigue and antagonism which is just a habitual occurrence in the air. Trapped in this kind of atmosphere that I never dreamed of, it comes to mind how life could have been lived the other way around in total artistic abandon as I looked upon to it, given the existent former possibilities laid upon the way. With devoted, highly spirited, admirable art master, with all the ways of artistic struggle, abreast with equally motivated and talented peers, and hang around in a fitting environment to quench the tendency of the soul to render beauty of nature, should have been the existence to fittingly evolve. But as I was thrusted into a world of doubt and hesitancy, it's atmosphere to be adverse from such a way, instead I had to play along for what they are, which requires an approach away from truthful noble intentions indicative of religious devotion and faith in purpose. The daily hubbub is a bedlam of unsteady preferences bordering on hideous inkling to rummage and adopt the stamping ground taking up on the ineffable marvels of nature and be at peace in intense struggle. But here, I can only go on musing and take a deviant steps to cope with such a different reality.

My early life had been a chronicle of an earnest, memorable experiences that became the basis in the shaping of the nature of my character in the vicissitudes growing up. The intimacy and imprint of the place to ones psyche that embodied in the formative stage are hard to change once it is set in such a very engaging existence as I had. And so do the traits and values I had known in my late teens to comprise the given nature, that which later pitted me against a conflicting habits upon my entry into the government atmosphere.

The succeeding narrative offers some glimpse about an existence that defines the difference of a reality and personal character in which it is shaped as determined from another to entangle with an adverse ones that comes to show later.

In Matutinao, a coastal Barrio of Cebu island, Central Philippines, where I grew up from early youth, was a place borne with every essence of simplicity of nature that also instilled the nature of a person growing up with all its wonders and primitivity. In those times, I had already a close affinity to it and lived with it as its elemental part, being a perennial figure to roam the pristine river far inland, of the mountainous forests, and seaside cliffs and gorges. I loved to explore the mysteries it hides and I developed a physical build of an athlete out of sheer inkling to become absorbed and ably throughout it's realm. I would swim to the high seas and back alone, out of sheer thrill risking shark's prey. I partly grew up in Leyte from birth till grade three, but I entreated my mother even earlier on to spend my schooling there in southern Cebu, the place of my aunt Trinidad Duque, or aunt Trining as she was fondly called. Such times there till my high school years were crucial to the shaping of my basic character. The tiny barrio-by-the coast and immediate mountainous areas through which the crystal clear river flows directly into the heart of the sleepy community is only populated with twenty houses. The river sleeks directly downstream from upland forested recesses toward the edge of church's perimeter, open air basketball court and stage, down the road bridge and beyond the primary school, with few acacia trees on the extremities by the estuary facing the peebly shore. The road between the school and the adjacent church connects toward the main community with single-lane wooden bridge twenty-five meters long and about what a vehicle normally fits in width for the parallel slabs of wood laid on way equidistant and with a side railings three feet in height. The school grounds is directly bounded by rip-rap of boulders with its open edges to the river which waters averages fifteen feet deep, too deep and danger prone enough for any age-young children of elementary level - those provincial children don't drown anyway. They are born-swimmers. About five kilometers way upward through the river is a Kawasan waterfalls about 32 feet high, the edge by which the falls drops is broken half by a jutting boulder. The folks and natives long accustomed to calling it Kawasan - which means as "falls" itself became adopted as its official name, and hence, Kawasan Falls. A pathway leading to the falls from Matutinao terminates a distance three kilometers from which it is not still visible but already audible of its incessant gush of water. Continued progress is by fording the ever itself knee and waist-deep trek by river shallows as it succeeds by overhangs of thick vegetations and steel cliffs. To usually reach the falls' upper levels is to clamber from inside the dark cavernous maze of rock formations to emerge from below toward it's upper vicinity. Upon entry commencing an ascent on the left side of the falls, a more clever and stronger person clamber first, and another reaches his hands while being pulled and aided up by stepping on yet another person's shoulder to add his reach for grasp. At times I come to this locations alone that I can't imagine how I made it through but for my plain audacity and excitement and going the way by tree overhangs - to catch freshwater prawns by a bamboo weavework trap, but also for love imbibing on the serene, mystical aura of the eerie surroundings that excites visions of the unknown, until being caught there by the fall of darkness going home. The length of the waterway from the falls' edge about ten meters, and 100 meters upward is an unfathomed deep blue pool and so Olympic size in length and width. It's right side lengthwise the falls flank is walled with a 100 ft. towering cliff. It is jutted obliquely with medium size trees from near the and intermittently upward to the skyline growing on rock fissures up to the summit. The adjacent side of the cliff-overhang is an upper continuation of the river by way of river-wide, lower falls ten feet high. And against a tolerable force of falling water choosing thinner volumes, by inching to enter below against the pressure, it can be accessible past to its cavernous lower base rocks, yet with unexplored portions of dark recesses. My every visit here, and without any other human being in sight, I would seize the chance to make prolonged swimming exercises at the pool delight at the thought nobody could ridicule my activity when most natives and country folks see it as insanity swimming back and forth repeatedly. It was while I set up my prawn trap in place and linger till afternoon to retrieve it that I used to explore the places' vicinity. Here I would randomly jump from beside the main falls' rock vantage point down into 32 feet below and ascend all over again to repeat the act as I please to do. There was once a folk, it was told, who tried to impress a foreign tourist by jumping from the same spot as I did, but did not surface immediately for a while. But when he did, it was discovered he was found to be lifeless. He might had been carried by underwater current spawned by the force of falling water and remained long enough to be short of breath and drowned. The natives attributed it to the anger of the wilderness' spirits who did not like the act. It might have infuriated them for a showiness of a conduct unbecoming to display how to relate with the natures' atmosphere. Acting in innocence as if we were part of them begets a sense of harmony to be aligned to natural elements including the "hidden dwellers". Monkeys also roam everywhere, some in droves, up to the mountain ranges bordering on Matutinao itself, and still others venture into hillsides and vegetated cliffs directly above the coastal road, swinging on tree branches. One kilometer from the Barrio is a strongly gushing spring with its egress hole three feet in diameter issuing from out the rocky mountainside of the river. The folks call it Tubod, a Visayan dialect meaning 'spring' itself, from where their drinking water is fetched with a fat bamboo tube slung on their shoulders. Yet for me, I directly drink in river these river vicinities and upward for the purity of the waters itself. Tubod us also a common destination for the folks and visitors alike for bathing and picnic - though they are still scarce at the time, even as around its area us set like a miniature dam to still the flow to a swimming pool length to swim on. The pool's upper end is from where Tubod gushes out at left side at surface level and is below a rocky elevated base of four feet to dive from. I used to dive from this rock platform in a routine swimming regimen [mostly freestyle] from end to end even as almost no people happened to see me doing so. When typhoons and rainy seasons come, the stone barriers are all washed away and the folks build it over and over again in a repetitive cycle as it is destroyed in a recurrence of storms through time. The road bridge if the Barrio is situated 200 meters from the estuary with seashores on both flank dotted with promiscuous reefs protruding at knee-deep tide, the extremity if which borders on the abrupt depth of the blue. At times, whales could be seen to swim close by at a vantage point of school classrooms and national road adjacent to the church grounds in open view if the sea. Directly at the back of row of houses by the road in the main community are foothills of which the hills itself are adjacent to the coast from which is an excellent panoramic view of the ocean and Negros Island around Kanlaon Volcano. I grew and explores all these places as boy up to my teens. Being personally immersed with such reality and atmosphere that wrought into my being as a first and basic component nature in the foundation of the shaping of character, it just holds through time later. It is even kept as a kind of offshoot the way characteristic nature is borne to a person who carries it on to growth to form indelible habits and propensities. In light of this, to start with, it was in these periods when it showed a first indication of my inclination to paint upon unearthing a World War II soldier's helmet at the backyard of my aunt's house. I cleaned, painted, and put on a lettering on it with a self-made brush from human hair. As I had worn it afterwards - for fun, or sportiveness, a penchant to draw soon became evident, as I began to randomly paint, by then, copying an imposing face of an Hollywood actor, a portrait of a Philippine President, and many more. My sacristan friend doubted whether I did it myself, wondering how I came up with the likeness when I was only generally seen what a typical country boy would be: a firewood gatherer, a coconut climber, or a company of fishermen. And so did the fishing crew of my aunt in disbelief who comes to her house weekly for meetings and claims of share if their earnings. My aunt once implored me to stay put in Matutinao after I came back from Mindanao on a two- month retreat at my cousin's farm in Malaybalay, Bukidnon shortly after I quit college, ad I sought to keep up with psychological stability due to leaving abruptly my cherished vocation in school. But forsaking continued college studies anyway, just gave rise to get aspire and work for good, and I rightly found a job at the Tacloban Coca-cola Plant. Even then as being lodged into a premature start to come to work - just a year and a half after being formally introduced to visual arts in college, I became a fully dedicated and serious artist, as we were launched in a period of spitrited artistic activity, regularly painting outdoors with the tutelage of our master Martino Abellana. He, a professor at U_, once rendered an actual charcoal portrait of me in a class art session after which he gave it to me as a gift that I framed, kept, and oversaw as a thing of value - he accumulated numerous pieces to his credit bought by many people of nobility and rich art enthusiasts. My uncle Felicisimo Mesa though, of whose house I temporarily stayed while I was already making rounds on my job at the Coke, removed it from where I hang at our quarters, and never saw it again anymore. Maybe to him, it was all trash. He himself was a transportation head at the Coca-cola, an unenlightened workaholic, too consumed on the concerns of official troubles, though I never depended on him, but entered the advertising department on my own some initiative alone, and learned to grasp at once the weight of being expected to make things done. I was eighteen then when my cousin Willy Mesa, his son, and a 25-year-old Tour of the Philippines veteran, sought out to become my helper on wall mural contracts, such that I became a precocious giver of sorts to them. I was an admire of his own cycling feats anyway.

It came to gradually clearer my short stint at the Coke would grow to become more engaging to cause an ineradicable mental imprint in later times. Having become already a contractor of the company at 18, and decided to live separately for good, I was in inclined to consummate the earnest acceleration of the activity to move a carefree way even in a momentous air. And to suit the exigency of the times as needed, I rented in a seaside city community at P30.00 a month in the Sagkahan district of Tacloban, which houses' structural posts are stuck on seaside shallows with floors elevated six feet from sea level, designed to be unreachable on high tides. Life at the Coke and in the derivable settings to be embraced can also be comparable in terms of earnest values of what my childhood times had been in Matutinao.It came to mind I had to do it on my own, which offered me the means that I had excellently met. The setting of an impending relevant and straightforward struggle coming to happen. Being this Coke company to have such a branch location in the Visayas, which is within a region convenient to the stamp between my art circles, apart from its simplicity of life, I could always wander therein at my whims and be ubiquitously abreast in the ongoing development attending my relevant vocation. I would always have a chance to ramble from place to place in a quest that nurtures favorable to my interests, revisiting the place of my childhood and render it a primary component for a subject matter in depictions. Even then when I was there as a youth, I felt it was something to be chronicled and portrayed, but as existence itself would shape and nourish me in an unexpected way,vit came to create that which make a person bound to be competent for that end, which I fairly shown in a relatively short time. In my short period of college I had hobnobbed amongst the foremost artists of Cebu, and cultivated close acquaintances with the best. Some came to teach art at U_ later and organized group or solo exhibitions and won prestigious art competitions. While looking upon to be fairly comparable or even to achieve more than the commendable deed they had shown, and pursue an art practice away from the prevalent artistic influence, I sought to initially draw temporary income through my connections to the Coke, and yet to be abreast time and again with my contemporaries. I had known of my master to be an impressionist just like Amorsolo of whom he was a former pupil, but it is already a very beaten track which history had already been consummated to excellence by its pioneers. But even as he exuded too much enthusiasm teaching art himself, I equally took the sincerity he imparted notwithstanding the style of painting. Wherever I was, I always thought that art practice was omnipresent. Wherever I was, I occupied myself with line drawings, sketching and painting on the spot that had just become a habit and automatic as breathing. I had perceived everything in nature as painting undone. All of my relatives, from closest to distant ones never understood me, except Benjamin Martinez, a third degree cousin of mine and himself a painter who also made an important part in my making. I had the fervor for great toil till my body ached, and was already used to limping home after a backbreaking work dropping in bed like a log. I incessantly painted and sketched spontaneously, actuations strange to the mundane ways of the populace although my friends in the province came to be proud and flattered of my hanging around and mingling with them. Meanwhile, my uncle was becoming more anxious of my uncommon perseverance and independent motivations within the company he worked. He could not comprehend the personal characteristics I embody given the limitations of the way he was enlightened and of his inability to grasp the unusual factors instrumental to my making. But officials concerned of my connections to Coke were an exact opposite of his in their equally and mutually spirited motivations in the reciprocity I exuded which in itself is a prevalent air among them. My fervor for great toil simply meant to have found its haven. As my uncle has nothing to do at all about how I should carry on within the place, hindrances were unknown to me when freedom in struggle meant spending time and energy solely without the burden of disheartening individuals coming as a head-on distraction. This motive is just wrought in combining form with an awareness to envision the brilliance and splendor that nature holds and thus make a restless soul to be perturbed from doing nothing. The rigors of perseverance with religious fervor and innocence have its place when what mattered most was hie to satiate the drive and appetite to achieve. It would altogether be smooth going when skill delivers it; nevertheless, it could also be construed as gratification. And obstacles would just become a distant reality to be easily cast off while the dominant air of positive acceleration propels its given way. My success was destined by the preordained track laid ahead of me. I painted and drew without complexities and concerns but art. I had cultivated a burgeoning atmosphere with which to relevantly stomp around and had been proud of a budding consciousness to practically quench propensities. I began to understand and develop a dexterity with which to handle what I perceived in nature in terms of painting. Production was prolific to a degree corresponding to a high state of motivation. As I practically cultivated acquaintances with artists in the region with comparable talents, and shared views and enthusiasm about art and its way of learning that also wrought into my deportment and mannerisms, the kind of nature that it projects appeared as rare in the general air of mundane existence around me when at times, I would be situated in the provincial norms and habits. Indeed dedicated and serious artists are actually of rare stick. Even as I became detached from practical relevancy with the common people, I never dreamed of totally leaving the provinces of Leyte and Cebu anyway when all roads point to viability to my career. And even if a fateful decision to leave college redirect horizons, I still felt secured at the thought of having yet the chance to practice my vocation on the proximity of the right outdoor subject matter and it's corresponding wide artistic setting, especially around Matutinao. Diplomas have altogether become unnecessary to artists who work and could grow by their own activities alone.

Early in life I had learned to make a living on odd jobs. Even before my advent at the Coke, I had already discovered the virtue of cultivating close acquaintances with sense of family. While in Cebu, my occasional visits to my relatives and friends in Leyte created much fuss about missing one another and do to the vice versa as I lingered on long durations. I had the roots and familial endearment to the two provinces even as it took shape of what I had become from derivable factors itself, unexpected of its constituents, though they only ought to be receptive of the values it brings, and somehow come to be proud to have some of my sketches. I had painted a 4×8 ft. copy of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper for the dining room of my aunt's house in Matutinao when I was 16. And so too, copies of Magellan's landing in Homonhon and Mactan Island in various scenes for the house's balcony and living room, which became the initial curiousity to greet visitors accommodate to the only host house of such a tiny tourist destination; it was also a host house for people coming for various purposes. It was even preferable for nuns rather than the convent which lacked inhabitants to extend them hospitality and fill the air with sense of family. When they were supposed to reside there, it was preferable for them to stay at my aunt's house to connect with the folks. By imploring my mother to come and spend my primary education there, many of my cousins also saw the fair air and later followed suit, stayed for long and imbibed on every possible nourishment it can impart, body and soul, discovering purity and peace and became part of the motley members of the family. My mother once brought me here when I was a toddler, and by recurrence of distant, hazy memory about her fording a waist-deep river neat Tubod, carrying me sat on her neck, a feeling of the essence of nature never dissipated in my subconscious, heightened by wonder whether I could have slipped from her grasp if she tripped while wading and drowned me, till it made me fully aware growing up so as to draw me toward the place. There I learned to swim outright upon my school transfer as a 9-year-old, thrilled by the direct, close view of the river from school windows that just inundates the school grounds on high tides, especially in the month of June. There in my adolescence, I found the benefits of jogging uphill - even for no culminating event but just to come up with the sensation of fitness and handily reach the farthest heights, and partake with the outlandish air, wondering if the deafening silence of untrodden mountains to where shouts echoed from place to place. The region from where the waterfalls eternally groans - or at nearer observations could be heard as an incessant blast of water, break the spell of tranquility. And from a certain point where it is hidden from a towering cliff, yet still, eerily audible in its reverberations, blends with the cry of monkeys and the twitting of birds. It was long before indications of my tendencies to be artistically inclined become evident, an early times of far off obliviousness and distant memory of bygone days when I used to regularly roaming these areas as a tiny elemental part of the landscape and never known such existence itself dies with time and can only perpetuate as a myth depicted from whence I burgeoned and have tended to render it. For pervasive development desecrates and defaces it's purity. Nightlife in Matutinao was of an equally unsullied existence, more pristine in my time while still unreached by electricity. We often slept there at night in a hurt by the sea, in front of a peebly shore, or went fishing in the night with nets for tiny shrimps which emits nocturnal phosphorescence upon the edge of reefs like fireflies. These are scenarios of distant reality of a point in time that once lived and stood constituting a quaint, elementary nature even in the composition of community itself corresponding to the whole atmosphere.Even as the national road connects the Barrio from the main city 81 kilometers away, it still solely flourish by its own distinctive primitivity. The folks was still avidly superstitious. My schoolmate named Jack once disappeared without a trace and the people took turns if imputing it to nature's spirits that caused his disappearance. They marched on the road making noises, banging tins and pans holding torches in route to the spot they suspected they suspected the spirits were Jack, a roadside coastal cave of narrowed entrance rightly beyond the church perimeter and over the Barrio's border directly facing the sea. They had daily offerings of fruits and newly killed chicken and bowls of its blood, placing candles near the cave praying and imploring to return jack. One week passed before it was reported Jack was found to have ran away from home to Negros Island. Yet such naïveties were only component nature characteristic of the place's primitive reality as a whole. Within an immediate scenery over the community bordering the coastal waters with peebly shores and shiny stones, people lounge around in unassuming way, fixing chores in a quite and innocent life. Similarly peebly is the river bed which is fordable waist deep in some areas near the estuary and at back of the school 200 meters away from the bridge, through which is more than a fathom on high tides. These areas are where mostly children swam and making the bridge a jumping-off point, to prank motorists splashing them by the blast of water upon impact of a jump in crouch position, hitting the water, buttocks first. Seemingly indeed, the inherent vivacity of the place and it's aura imposes itself on the outside world standing tall with the way of life they use to live and sustain with it. The church, school, and open court at the at the south side separated by the bridge from the main community, is the other half of Matutinao that make up solely for public purposes and recreations, except for a lone house of a reclusive family perched atop a hill directly overlooking, it which is a termination of mountain ranges extending from the falls, to Ilaya, and ending at its foothill by the cave below facing the coastal road. And so folklore has it that such cave of narrow entrance is supposedly only a tip of huge and extensive cavern under such mountain ranges extending from near the falls and is said to be inhabited by a listless, immobile gigantic snake barely fitting the same length of its space, the mouth of which opens at all times waiting for prey to go astray and devour by vacuum-induce suction at the cave mouth. These rumors have altogether made them to be wary and sensitive of the said cave to which any anomalous event they readily connect, though the Parish priest himself doesn't buy into these naïveties, and me too, with my sacristan friend, having went inside ourselves without incident doesn't suppose it to be true as a matter of course. Anyway, the atmosphere it instills by the folk's naïveties coupled with the queerness of place itself is what makes it to be idyllic, indeed in the eye of the conscious beholder that also comes into my wake. In the early times of my arrival at the place, I caught notice of a dilapidated, defunct, and deserted ferry boat for cattle anchored at all times beyond the reef at the deep fronting the main community. At the time, I was speculative about who owns it that which so never heard of being spoken about until it was gone. It merely served as an end point for us to swim to and back. We used to board it by clambering through an anchor rope and dive from stop the highest deck. It was finally shipwrecked at the shore after a very strong typhoon. And it would only carve in my thought as a fleeting episode of dubious nature, but only as an exciting spot of a picturesque scenario where it beautifully plays its part. In those times, Matutinao's supply of drinking water was of tubing directly running from remote mountain spring by the falls' vicinity and issuing from a strong pressure to reach more than 20 households, including those at the outskirts, without the aid of a pump. The plan to install a dynamo for hydroelectric power at the Falls and build a feeder road is actually one early step ahead to decadence. Yet, indeed, could have I been lucky enough of to have lived in that memory bearing only witness of a scenario of its unspoiled times and not of the desecrated ones that could also recur to haunt and perturb me as party to the actual experience? Sceneries unspoiled without the ey-block of cottages that was rearing to proliferate would keep the sanctity of nature as it should. Without actually coming to live up to latter existence, it might minimize a mental perplexity to linger in a given consciousness that would have pestered later on.

My aunt, a midwife by profession, was no longer active upon my advent, and her clinic by the foothill across the road adjacent to her house was already closed from service long before my arrival. Like of the ferry boat, I could only surmise about how active it was in its prime. Yet if it would only die down in decay and not change its aspects that corrupts it's history, so be it. For my aunt was an integral part of Matutinao which does not need a better midwife if changes will only bring things in vain. As she had been exceedingly active in her prime to make to endear her among people in neighboring towns and barrios, my fresh arrival only marked a long and stimulating past since dead as evidenced by dusts and cobwebs inside the clinic borne with traces of well-being and humanitarian duty, as she already aging at 83, was a respected elderly paid with visits by people from all walks of life. The way she herself burgeoned and established into the place, with very so few people of essential contribution, is also a crucial part in the making of Matutinao. The place was exemplary of a tightly-knit community where people interact in reciprocity, wary of offending each other's feelings, but quick to stir issues that brightens. There are occasions though in our other visiting family circles, when they import an alienable brand of grandstanding, such that for one thing, they noticed the fuss about my sketching and painting from life when they were stirred in disbelief. So to speak, I had rendered on the spot a charcoal portrait of my two nieces when they were still toddlers, and it was framed in protective glass, and taken care of to last, a fitting glimpse of ephemeral demeanor of early youth captured to look back upon when they become grown ups

Matutinao, 81 kilometers southwest if Cebu City, and 8 from its own town of Badian, connected by winding picturesque national road, is closely lined by hills and cliffs by the coast. The seashores is narrowly bounded by knee deep corral reefs, some to protrude out the water, yet a few steps ahead is an abrupt bottomless deep. From some winding roads in various elevations overlooking the sea, occasional whales could be seen to swim up and down the surface so near at stone's throw, seemingly beguiling children while ejecting fountains in their blowholes. And some gorges by the seaside are directly accessed by sea level. We used to throw anchors by pumpboats on rocks on such rocky coastal places neighboring Matutinao and find shades on the water under overhangs of trees, and used to explore arched rock formations.

As time gradually withered away in our nature's embrace of day-to-day, it also assumes a crucial period when focus diverts to make up for what it came for as it thrives to flourish. As I grew up to my teens, experience personified to embody in my adolescent propensities that gradually found its form. It was my prerogative what to develop, even as my intermittent absence kept me away in my studies that the beauty of these places had became gradually impalpable for me, coupled with local changes that took place later on of which I was reluctant to participate, besides the fact that my aunt had died at the time. I was about to halt my studies when a feeder road to the falls was already being constructed by way of the riverside to replace the narrow pathways that we used to tread. And little by little though, I was actually being dragged away from then on upon finding work at Coca-cola, and still, began to be perturbed about yearning to return anyway. For seemingly it became a crossroad from when we began to miss the carefree days more abreast with mother nature. The proximity in the change of my location still very well made me wanting to relive it when we used to sing all days at Ilaya, an outback of Matutinao, way by the river, one kilometer from the Barrio halfway to the falls, not to mention other festivities and thrill seeking in farther remote areas, inhabited only by people we ought to know as friends. Our life back then are fond of recollections, making the best of times as my aunt owns part of land of fruit and coconut trees there to make our trekking routine and to make things done both for the whole family and for diversions.

I mostly derived my sincerity from the distinct atmosphere that ingrained in me to work hard, and changed my younger deportment to work hard. Nevertheless, the reality brought to mind that an excellent place of work for art is just around the corner, which I cherished as propitious. Pertinently, the Coke are rigorously industrious and spirited bunch of individuals with whom I was proud to be part of the family. When my cousin qualified for the Tour of the Philippines, and he being an employee sponsored as an athlete at the time, Coke took turns in busying preparations to welcome him upon passage of the leg of the event by putting a streamer at the archways of San Juanico bridge, which gestures also underscores the encouragement of gutsy individuals that almost stood as norm within the company. Coke officials themselves were open-minded and inclined to reciprocate with people motivated to conquer uncommon feats. While such experience would just become worthwhile and inspiring, I counted on its significance and value of having it taken place within the region that can be mostly utilized to make the best if it, career-wise, though my uncle himself seemingly just always posed to be of incongruous nature in relation to myself. Most of the Coke personnel is characteristic of coordination and encouragement that which give someone freedom to to leave it on one's own way, and yet share their sentiments as an equal regardless of official position. Such convenient, relevant atmosphere is still a breath of fresh air, and fitting step ahead from the kind of life before, adoptable in a city's hubbub and continue to take place pertinently amidst a motley strain of complex interaction. And I sought of my return visits of having to bring to Matutinao folks something new and better that could just be further enhanced with values what purity of nature brings.

I often slept there at night at a fisherman's quarter by the shore, in a fishing preparations if a dawn's departure off to sea, starting at the stars while lying in bed wondering whether death ever comes at all. There was a sense of eternal repose in Matutinao even in life. The timelessness transcends the sense of greatness of all existence. Such a reality detached from all the world only lends a room for people of boundless will and indomitable spirit to feel at home. Most people from neighboring towns and barrios don't go to church of their own places but to the church of Matutinao. There are beckons of the ethereal landscape and atmosphere characteristic of the queer and unique elements comprising it. Other places has their own distinctive qualities, but the tiny Barrio has much more to rivet notice that others greatly lack, whether real or mythical. The setting and make-up of the landscape with its inhabitants is indicative of formation to raise curiousity. And the mountainous backdrop directly facing the expanse of ocean bordering the narrow strip of terrain for the settlement below, that while one is atop overlooking the vista, makes it a perfect place to commune with God. Being a component element of an earnest and stimulating existence, it would just wrought into my character as a resolute individual. And I was able to conquer the impossible, being charged with tremendous spiritual and physical strength, fresh front these places, yet too precocious to have done feats rare of anyone to have done my age. At 18, I became a contractor of my own work exploits, accomplishing to paint murals 20 stories at the highest, coming up to task on my own sole initiative alone, chiefly relying on intuition on scaffolding installation and in application of color and scheme. In two months time, I finished 15 wall paintings, the average size of which is 12×24, and the number of which the Coca-cola company's iconic outdoor ads in such province would be repainted yearly. And it was my fifteenth lease on life.

When I was in downtown Tacloban at the height of one of my intense activity, and occasioned with a parade of stars, I felt a sense of deprecation and reticence as they sought to see who would happen to stare them that I accidentally did, unsuspecting they would focus on isolated corners and see what reaction would be like as others rooted and blushed on them. And it called to mind: what have they done worthy of adulation that they sought? Perhaps being groomed, being good looking, an offspring from high society, and now make appearances to present themselves that people may buy? I go to the nook, and peacefully to oblivion, but I would be reminded of the thought about things I have not done and yet sought to be credited of it. But peacefully I go to the nook with sense of relief that I have not acted in excess that betrayed myself. This orderly City of Tacloban will occasionally be disturbed by degenerative air of complexities that various visitors bring. By coming, the stars were wanting to be admired by the folks, oblivious of the fact that these places also nurture those which look up to them who can't reconcile admiration for no cause. I stood adamantly about a parade, like being ill-at-ease against any ironic apparitions if only to straightforwardly stand in Tacloban.

It could not have mattered much if I spend most of my time in the Visayas region. I had nothing to lose but much more to gain. Even if my job was not fully suitable to the practical nature of my profession, it was just incipient for the more relevant development to unfold. It was enough and aptly convenient even as I was only able to work confidently with familiar people. From a country lad, changes came too soon to make me a youthful, motivated contractor with a knack for harmonious rapport with my superiors and fellow workers. My job, being mainly outdoors gave me the opportunity to stomp on myriad grounds that only cultivated my further endearment toward the region. The billboard I painted at one end of San Juanico bridge at Leyte's side was readily an excellent view to motorists leaving Leyte for Samar island the work duration of which I was able to imbibe the scenic atmosphere, as I was able to carry out the job while being totally absorbed in the tranquil surroundings. Another one I did was in a building facing the sea of Tacloban city, which could not be so much as visible to the city's hubbub as it faces backwards than it would be for arriving ships on port call. On one occasion, our advertising head was surprised to see my renderings if a Sunkist orange on a five-story building wall. He had never seen the likes of it before of such brilliant fresh-looking work of a fruit on a wall just for advertising purposes alone that he took much excessive pride of my having come up with it. A natural outcome of natural habits applied, construed as making things normally done, I never purposely vied to make the stir as it got. As I accomplished all the murals in a yearly repainting, they never wanted to lose me anymore in their workforce and saw to it that I continue my services in such a giant company. Given the stride that I have already been accustomed to, wrought from the immediate past wherever flow of life would lead, it is in the wholehearted sense of family, companionship and rigors of industry that also benefited me to make my stamp within the Coke.Being imbued of what Matutinao life was like, when we sang and held merriments into the depths of provincial night cultivating personal closeness and acquaintances that make absence stir a recurring want to relive the good old days, and so is if my momentous time at the Coke which I would surely miss similarly. At 18, I became fully entrenched in the Visayas region, psychologically, personally, and spiritually. And drastic severance of the running momentum must only slip toward an unsavory derailment that could tend to bring everything in vain. I loved to witness the break of dawn - early to bed, early to rise, and undertake a daily routine with punctuality. For given the habits that naturally took place in proper conditions, I had once been honored in Elementary graduation as the most punctual pupil. And to the time I regarded art ad a lifelong struggle, I treated any other efforts worthy of equal sincerity and and dedication. As I reported for daily work at Coca-cola upon being integrated to the workforce, I easily cultivated a sense of camaraderie among veteran advertising painters and learning, at the same time, to reciprocate with higher officials who are used to lighting it up with constructive humors that ease the work process. The rigors of work and facility to make things done supervening the air made it a hub for people that produces concrete results. In ways exemplary of activity that actually takes its pace to the spirit of teamwork and encouragement, there was once an onlooker in my case who commented while I was at work, " what a dangerous and risky job is that, one slight move the wrong way and you're dead!" And to which one of our company member retorted, " no, could it be hard for you, you don't do it yourself, it's a different case when others easily do it!" In an intensified momentum in the running pace of activity, it entails a personal imprint on the weight of task indelible in memory an event to reckon as filled with sense of satisfaction. The searing heat of a wall on a building during work in a high scaffold on popular commercial design smacks an air of intense struggle to reckon with, performing with sense of passion yet coming out fulfilled. In a very short time of less than a year, I came up to the height of such a fleeting period of activity in the advertising division, making rounds with old hands of Tacloban Coca-cola painters. The lone surviving contractor of the company's yearly repainting of billboards and wall murals before my advent, being himself my distant cousin Benjamin Martinez, who was just as equally masterful in his own stamp, was anyway informative to relay it's history, whose account seemingly came out of him to stand out among them. One other contractor who co-existed with him before was unfortunate enough to fall in a work accident, that upon his fall, entangled in an electric wire halfway down was electrocuted and landed on a roof 15 feet below to consequently made him incapacitated for life.

Ben, as my distant cousin was called, being never employed on a monthly basis before, connected only as a contractor, was just a kind of painter of rare skill and excellent personal character who was also adept about maintaining good relations with his connections. Though later on, he was aptly groomed as the sole and only the very first painter of the San Miguel division to be hired as a permanent employee, whereas before, he was only interacting from its sister company to the other in contracts until having finally found respite from wall painting tasks upon my advent.

I still never had known Ben closely since my being an elementary 3rd grader so much so about his making as a painter in our Barrio of Balud in Leyte, though I hazily remembered being told theirs is a family that is our distant relative. And I had never known how it came for him to come out differently from the majority of personal nature of our provincemates and become a full-pledged at the heart of such poor fishing community of mostly drunkards, troublemakers and gamblers. Ironically, while coming up with such rare ability. He only reached grade 3. Yet still, I never discounted his essential value and contribution to my growth.

As I left Balud at age 8, I was still innocently and haphazardly unaware its atmosphere was indeed not conducive to a better personal growth, as I was chiefly swayed to embrace Matutinao for its geological characteristics. To have fallen to work with the brush was wholly by instinct and caprice in such a place where nobody personified as a model to follow through. To the delight of our family circles, our pumpboats (motorized banca) got its first lettering named Sto. Niño with decoration all over its body. Later on while I was in third year high school visiting visiting Tacloban since I left Leyte, I had met and known what Ben had become at that point: already married and renting a house beside a seaside highway in downtown Tacloban, working on his odd jobs on Art and Sign for as many jeepney route signage he displayed as he could. He was augmenting his means of living by his trade while already being known as a Coke contractor. Coming to Balud shortly sometime later in my next travels coinciding his occasional return there, we eventually met again, exchanging greetings and pleasantries in which he shared the basic know-how while I was still a burgeoning lad in the early stagges of learning the craft. Then upon a flash of thought he asked me haphazardly without cause, to accompany him to his hut which I just lately known to be always closed. And to my astonishment, I found it to be full of paintings hung and stacked all over upon our entry, which is a queer fixture among all other neighboring huts that are laden promiscuously with various kinds of fishing equipments. I had just came up with copying pictures in paint back in Cebu, and now it came to my sight a not so alienating an spectacle. After a while shortly after my return to Cebu, I was back in Tacloban again to see how he had newly opened a shop in downtown commercial area where other framed pictures were already displayed.

In time, I returned to Matutinao with much more knowledge and encouragement about the trade, with such modest source of references upon my reach. And after graduating from high school, I took Fine Arts at U_ for good, and went on to only 3 semesters so far in a four-year course. I dissipated a sense of intense emptiness and depression after I was forced to cut short the studies of my cherished vocation by traveling to Mindanao, as I already mentioned, alone, a must as it should have been, and for the first time, to the Far-Off outback of Bukidnon, near the foot of the Kitanlad mountain range - whose whose one of its peaks is labeled as the second highest peak in the country. There, a neighboring huts are kilometers in distances. Only two of us in a dwelling my farmer cousin-in-law would descend to town for a week in a period of regular basis to leave me all alone on my own that offered me enough time to ponder and take stock. Here I cleared and plowed for no uncertain end. When psychological pressures and emotions died down, and realities set in. I undertook a fresh brief return for the last time: firstly, direct to Matutinao where friends and Aunt Trining alike bid me stay and resume the good old days. I lingered for a while when the air was much filled with nostalgia, and while outings and festivities ran at short intervals, Barrio fiesta included. But instinct and sense of mission told me I must do something, for the "track already laid ahead of me". It was in this occasion that directly ushered me in the succeeding events to fastidiously lodge me into the Coca-cola company, charged with so much drive and ambition, refreshed from a period of so much self sacrifice and soul-searching and now again throw myself into exploits that literally made me tread into a thin line bordering between life and death.

As time went on, I found out about Be already irregularly connected with the SMC, and had already moved near the Plant. He being a surviving veteran of the job of yearly repainting of wall murals itself, accorded me some advice as I had eventually made work commitments myself, though I had to rely on my own sole discretions after all. He felt gratified of my assumption to a work of which he was currently burdened to answer a call, with the thought of committing his own former job to an individual not personally disparate to him, when the SMC already came to be added to his workload. Ben was even a little bit surprised I made it to enter the Coke's advertising department alone. We already changed mutual reciprocity before, so that now the coordination has come to be borne with some weight though I was 18 and he was 35. My uncle at the Transportation Department somewhat became more anxious about my instant and unexpected assumption into the rare and select men of the trade without initial apprenticeship - a newcomer customarily needed to master and familiarize the logo, that he would become jealous of an independent motivations in my activities that did not refer first to his own idiosyncrasies. He himself was hounded by situational changes befalling his lot that finally dislodged him to be reassigned and demoted to a yard supervisor. It was also because of the obvious downturn in my uncle's position that perhaps contributed to the cold reception in the sudden and direct appearance of my work assumptions. He was replaced by a young engineer, a newcomer, at the progress in high time involving the reshuffling of division chiefs which others normally acknowledged and recognized Ben's talents of which he sole was unreceptive. My sudden entry to perform outright within the level of the proven and tested might have taken him aback, more to the fact that it entailed a latent concurrence within the field involving Ben whom I often conferred with and who came to have conferred within the circle of his rivals. As I executed jobs inside the compound while my uncle too, was discharging his own duties, we made occasional encounters in which I noticed him to perceived in a different eye than he usually did as his ordinary nephew. Such mental imprint about him and other relatives who bade me farewell as I embarked for Manila at the pier, I was to bring it way to my journey as I left Tacloban that would remain vivid for the rest of my life.

Throughout my journey, it was but a time of reckoning about relegating my fate to the unknown, as did before, while I was still divining in my birthplace of Balud about the consequences of dating into an arduous commitment to render murals still in my teens, with only sheer courage and coming from almost nothing. Anyway, it begot indications of having somehow paid it off. But now I had only a hazy idea about what a Manila scenario to unfold would be. And there it smacked if early derailment upon coming to sight that wedged me further to the irreversible. At this point, my time in Manila marked the significance of my own sole wisdom and discretions to make, if I had to decide it myself alone and determine which way actually leads me to better personal relevancy, when I can actually parry an impending greater mess, and detour from a brimming complexity in the air.

Nevertheless, with one companion named Butoy, a nephew of S.F. Tan himself, who would recognize him at once on sight, we boarded a bus to his residence after coming from every inconvenience we underwent in our path. To get rid of any sensation of guilt from abandoning them (our group) altogether, even as I had still nowhere to go for sure I felt constrained to accompany him to solicit S.F. Tan's help by Butoy's own prodding he being a first degree nephew whereas I was only third. At this juncture, I could have diverted to any place, anywhere, to where I could gamble even amidst pennilessness and hunger. A period of raw privations and suffering could be let it come to pass at an opportune time, it alone may never warp horizons and doesn't derail impetuosity of convenience if is just heading for the right track. There will only be wounds that would fully heal. At length, we already "hit land" and if I had to steer alone and leave Butoy altogether and be lost in a mass of people in a city, it could still be a convenience even if likened as being lost literally barely swimming a choppy sea. Perhaps little by little, given the vast potentials if youth, I may rise from the gutter, if in the gutter I may end up,band the muddling of my character, infecting my psyche and the sapping of the energies of my prime would not be so much as grievous as the trauma I will undergo on the adverse reality I was headed to be engulfed. But here I could not just easily undo and ignore the party in our group outright without creating much fuss lest I may be perceived as insensible for all the things expected of me. My own conscience told me I must push through, and steer clear of the things that slights, and as much as possible, make the best of what is already at hand. There had been indeed no actual forces to draw me the other way around but rather it got the more pressure to drive me further ahead. A given impulse would just have to embrace a basic instinct of coming up with a practical step. Anyway, Butoy would just go back to Balud later, disenchanted of the whole affair, but as was my won't never to easily give up, pressed ahead and became absorbed of the fuss way into my DBM capers. I could not so much raise great issues what necessaries to arise in S.F. Tan's lot - I was more used to hardships than it entailed, yet it did not much demanded psychological relevance in such situation I am commonly familiar with to seemingly hound me, than of the complexity I was soon to be absorbed in the DBM. Hardships had been part of my life all along, and even if already ingrained in a nature with affinity to isolation and pure hard work, to be lodged into a complex and disturbing atmosphere affecting work environment at the the DBM was a reality too much to handle. And it so happened too fast I did not have a chance to jump off the train. I was thrusted by so many ineradicable factors that can not be simply dashed. I was even looked upon by our impoverished family back home now that I happen to land in Malacañang. When the adverse development somewhat made itself initially felt, my younger sister got the audacity to come and see it for herself if it is actually going well as it generated concern when I failed to make further contacts. She however only cried upon an occasion of our meeting when I swore I will never ever come back.