September 2, 2007

CONTENTS

Features

• Finally, A Home for Loboc's World Class Music
• A Sim of their own
  

Columns

• Stings from the Wild
• Island Blend
  

Finally, A New Home for Loboc's World Class Music

They have performed in the country’s most important stages, and have trotted around the globe leaving audiences worldwide captivated by their angelic voices from different halls in the United States to the theatres in the European countries of Spain, France, Italy, & Germany, to the many cities in Asia, like Hongkong, and the cultural centers of China, specifically in Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin, Jiangxhi, and Hangzhou.
For years, home to the Loboc Children’s Choir is the centuries-old Parish church of San Pedro Apostol. While the convento is a fitting sanctuary for the cherubs’ singing rehearsals, the church had been transformed many times to function as a concert hall.

Now, at long last, they have a state-of-the-art theatre they can call their own and where peoples from everywhere can catch an experience of a lifetime to hear their music that flows resplendently and naturally as the emerald green waters of Loboc River.

“It’s a dream come true for us,” elatedly reveals Madam Alma Fernando Taldo, the choir’s conductor. “We cannot really thank him enough; he’s really like a father to us all.” Madam Taldo is referring to the theatre’s benefactor, Ambassador Carlos Chan.

It was in February of 2005 when the Loboc Children’s Choir was invited by the Liwayway (China) Co. Ltd, Marketing Corporation led by its officials Carlson Chan and Shera Chan (children of Amb. Carlos Chan) in a back-to-back concert with the Little Children’s Cultural Troupe from the Shanghai Chapter of the Soong Ching Ling Foundation at the Meralco Theater in Manila.

The success of that joint performance led to a similar concert, this time at the Lyceum Theater of Shanghai in July 2005. The LCC performed with the Shanghai Oriental Little Companion Art Troupe, the performing arts arm of the China Welfare Institute (CWI), founded by Soong Ching Ling (Madame Sun Yat-Sen), the late honorary President of the People’s Republic of China.

A foundation has been established after her with the aim to carry forward the spirit of love for children and the concern for their healthy growth in mind and body which she displayed during her lifetime. Amb. Chan had served as President of the Philippine Soong Ching Ling Foundation and his love for the singing children has certainly extended to all the people of Bohol, especially the Lobocanons.
It was during that 2005 performance at the CWI Children’s Palace in Shanghai when Amb. Chan shared to the choir and the Bohol delegation his desire to have a similar showplace in Loboc. Hence, the theater was first named Loboc Children’s Palace. Madam Taldo could hardly believe that in two years, that vision was transformed into a reality.

Last Aug. 24, no less than Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo arrived in Loboc to inaugurate the theater and the access road to it. The choir regaled the President and the dignitaries who became the first to sit down inside the fully air-conditioned theater that accommodates a hundred people. Madam Taldo reveals that Amb. Chan himself had seen to it that the theater’s acoustics, sound and lighting facilities were all state-of-the-art and an expert from Manila was sent to oversee its initial operations.

In the evening of the same day, local and foreign guests, which include a 20-man delegation of Chinese businessmen and investors brought by Amb. Chan were treated to a spectacular affair, starting off with a dinner by the jumbo bridge that affords an awesome view overlooking the river, with the well-lighted docking port and the Loboc tourism complex on one side and the parish church of San Pedro Apostol on the other side.

That night, the bridge finally rises above the ill fame it has brought upon the town for decades. Right there atop the infamous bridge, guests were brought to a different time and place, with the same refreshing feeling one gets while cruising placidly along the river. The music of the local musicians just floated in the breeze, as Loboc is “labyanan sa mabugnawng hangin.” Later in the evening program, the governor revealed that Pres. Arroyo will soon turn over the bridge to the municipal government so it can be used for various social and cultural functions. The idea that the dances and songs currently performed at Busai will be transferred in the area so as to maintain the serenity of the upstream cruise was also floated during the evening conversations.

After a toast led by Governor Aumentado and Ambassador Chan, the group convened at the theater to a first-rate performance of the Loboc Children’s Choir, the Loboc Youth Choir and the recently-established Loboc Youth Band. That very night, the audience cannot help but conclude that Loboc is indeed Bohol’s capital for music and the arts.

A Sim of their Own

Sixty years of witnessing to the Word, the Holy Name University community adds one more knot to even more strengthen their academic and familial bond, a Prepaid SIM of their own.

Provided by Globe Telecom, HolyName-an subscribers of the My HNU SIM will enjoy exclusive rates when texting or calling other My HNU SIM users. This specialized SIM also features a customized menu, exclusive to the HNU community, wherein students can download their most recent grades, receive information on the latest school events and be updated with important announcements. Additional intra-school emergency hotlines and other relevant services may be provided according to the school community’s specific needs.

Unveiled in a modest launching at the Academic Conference Room, HNU Lesage Campus last August 28, 2007, the My HNU Prepaid SIM was warmly received by both the HNU Administration led by University President Fr. Romeo P. Bancale, SVD, and the students of HNU represented by Central Student Government President David Maulas.

HNU is the only educational institution in Bohol, thus far, to have Globe’s affinity SIM and joins the rank of such schools as the De La Salle University in Globe’s growing roster of college-focused SIMs.

Famous Hoaxes

The Bible, an argument, and someone’s business sense in 1869 made possible one of the world’s famous hoaxes, those stunts that try to make real the unreal.

There was a ten-foot tall stone man discovered by workers who dug a well behind the barn of a farmer in Cardiff, New York. Word on the Cardiff Giant soon spread, and thousands went to the farm to see it. In time the viewers were charged 50 cents each, and still they kept coming.

A ‘petrified man’ versus ‘ancient statue’ match ensued. The former harked to the Bible, the latter favored the theory that a Jesuit missionary carved it in the 1600s.

Then a group of businessmen bought the Cardiff Giant for over 37 thousand dollars and moved it to Syracuse for a more prominent display. There it was analyzed by a paleontologist from Yale, who declared it a “clumsy fake” because its chisel marks were too clear for it to have been buried a long time.

Businessman and atheist George Hull confessed. He created the giant statue after arguing with a Methodist minister on whether the Bible should be taken literally. He didn’t think so, but the minister insisted that even the line “There were giants on the earth in those days…” (Genesis 6:4) should be taken literally.

So Hull made the stone giant to poke at Biblical literalists. It cost him over two thousand dollars, in conspiracy with the stonecutters who carved out the giant and the farmer who owned the place in which it was found. It didn’t hurt that his hoax also earned him profits.

The truth didn’t stop the public’s interest. The stone man was even called ‘Old Hoaxey.’ P.T. Barnum of Barnum Circus fame offered to rent it for three days at sixty thousand dollars. He was refused, so he had an artist build a plaster replica. It drew bigger crowds than the original fake, prompting the new owners to file a lawsuit, which fizzled when the judge decided to hear the case only if they could prove which one is original.

Across the Atlantic, in England in 1912, an artifact that proved to be ‘the missing link’ between man and ape rocked not the public but a more select group― the scientific community. The Piltdown Man, named such because it was excavated from a pit in Piltdown, England, had a human skull and the jawbone of an ape.

It was said to have lived half a million years earlier, during the Pleistocene period. For the next three decades, the scientific community accepted it as an authentic artifact and entered it in textbooks as Eonthropus Dawson, named after its discoverer, Charles Dawson, a lawyer and amateur paleontologist.

It proved to be unlike anything else as more skeletons of early man were found. By 1953, a team of researchers from the British Museum took a series of tests on the artifact. The skull was 50 thousand years old but the jawbone was just decades old. They also found out that the jawbone was chemically treated to make it appear ancient.

Since Dawson had died by then, speculations on who perpetrated the hoax remained unproved. Most suspected Dawson but some cast doubts on two heavyweights― the existentialist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who as a young priest helped in the excavation, and Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle, who lived near Piltdown and was reputed to hold a strong interest in paleontology.

Leave it to eccentric Englishmen to perpetrate hoaxes. In 1821, there was famous naturalist Charles Waterton. He arrived from Guiana with crates of specimens of South American wildlife. A customs inspector charged him with the highest import tax possible even if his cargo had more scientific than commercial value.

Waterton returned to Guiana three years later and came back with a remarkable specimen labeled Nondescript, a creature with a human head and face covered by thick fur that he claimed he had killed in Guiana’s jungles, as he described in his popular book.

Other skeptical naturalists argued that Nondescript’s face was molded out of the behind of a howler monkey. No other person can claim sightings of the creature, so Waterton’s specimen was the best case for its existence. There was just one catch: Nondescript had an uncanny resemblance to the customs inspector who taxed Waterton heavily back in 1821. It is said that he literally ‘made a monkey’ out of the tax collector.

Island Blend

Some mighty storm-category winds failed to dampen the mood when Uly Dolojol invited his inner circle of friends to his stylish birthday party held at his legendary Oops! Bar in Alona Beach very recently. The dinner was also in honor of Uly’s patron saint Santo Nino, whom he fondly calls Luisito—a thanksgiving for all the good fortune he and his partners have received throughout the years.

Set to the tune of such Studio 54 white-hot hits as Native New Yorker and I Haven’t Stopped Dancing Yet, the frenzied partying and dancing that followed a fab buffet dinner took on both bohemian and club-ish flavors. Tables glittered with candles that surrounded centerpieces of deep-red roses and freshly-harvested green swamp grass. Italian red wine flowed, the cakes (from Gil and Vicky Bongato and Ronaldo Garrido of 4B Travel Services) were devilishly delish, the dance floor was packed to the brim and smart banter proliferated till the small hours of the next day. Forever youthful and even more juvenile at heart, Uly is the true embodiment of someone who knows how to ‘live life to the fullest’ and, more interestingly, knows how to grab even the slightest bit of opportunity to throw an astonishingly divine party!

MIX. Kudos to all passers of the June 2007 nursing board! Allow us to make special mention of the adorable trio of new registered nurses Magnolia Ybanez, Anne Sala and Gay Yap. Michael Villas invited a few friends over to his family’s hilltop home in Dauis, Panglao Island for his birthday blowout a couple of nights ago. The intimate gathering had guests occupying five tables set on a well-manicured garden, overlooking the twinkling lights of Tagbilaran City and fishing boats dotting the bay. There was lechon and a long table filled with what must have been more than two dozen yummy dishes! His folks, Atty. Boy and Linda Villas, played perfect gracious hosts to all. The 1^st International Tourism Fair will be held at the Cebu International Convention Center from September 5-7, 2007. “Blazing Bohol” will be one of the highlights of the travel convention. Baby Balio, the dynamic force behind the island’s aggressive tourism campaign, promises a ‘sensory’ Boholano feast for everyone at the fair.