A pharmaceutical post (of sorts)

I didn’t know what I was in for when I volunteered to serve at Shell’s medical and dental mission in Tabangao, Batangas City last August 3.

Sure, I’d been at medical and dental missions before, but always as part of a coverage team. 

The full breakfast spread for the volunteers should have set off warning bells in my head. After all, why were we being treated to so much good food if we weren’t expected to burn it off – fried rice, daing, tapa, itlog, manok and all?

One of the doctors of the Batangas Medical
Society attends to a young patient at Shell's
medical and dental mission.

They did ring faintly in my head at the reaction of some of the other volunteers when I told them I had volunteered at the pharmacy. “Kayong pinakahuling matatapos (You’ll be among the last done),” said one. “Magulo diyan (It’s a riot there),” said another.

50M on Opening Day

Fifty million pesos does not make a blockbuster when it comes to film, but it certainly does for an exhibit.

Shell’s multi-media exhibit “Beauty, Bounty and a Shared Heritage: 25 Years of Protecting Tubbataha” at the Atrium of SM Mega Mall did not mean to make money.

In the strictest terms, it hasn’t.  All it’s done is to provide a venue for Environment Secretary Ramon Paje and Tubbataha Management Office (TMO) Head Angelique Songco to come together during the opening ceremony and talk. Since they were both early, there was a LOT of time for Songco to make her case and “catch the worm”.

Environment Secretary Ramon Paje gives a silver award
to Tubbataha Management Office Head Angelique Songco.

Paje pledged to provide the P50 million needed to build a new station for 10 to 12 marine park rangers tasked to protect the 97,030-hectare Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park (TRNP) and World Heritage Site in Palawan from illegal activities including fishing and collection of precious and lucrative marine life such as top shells.