Family photos

Take them while you can.

Maybe this isn’t really relevant today since everyone takes pictures of just about anything with the advent of camera phones, tablets and low-cost digital cameras.

But in my time, not all families had cameras. And those that had were not so free in its use because (and I am dating myself here) it was the type that used rolled photographic film which had a limited number of exposures. I remember that it was a luxury to get a roll of film with 36 exposures.

So when I looked for a picture of our basic family unit (before everyone upped and got married), the only one I found was taken decades ago. The most recent one I could find was missing a family member because it was taken when all five siblings came together --- to bury our father.

The last time all five of us sisters were
together was when everyone came home
for Daddy's burial.

Just recently, my daughter asked for a family picture for a school project. Easy enough, I thought until I found myself looking through several folders before I found one of all three of us. That’s because her Dad and I take turns taking shots.

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.

Making do, but not without

The next time your child complains about his allowance, tell him that children in public elementary schools are allotted only P15 per meal under the Department of Education’s (DepEd) school-based feeding program (SBFP).

Milet Esguerra, who heads the
STLC feeding program,
interacts with the kids.

“We’re giving a little more per child at the Tabangao Elementary School,” says Milet Esguerra, who heads the feeding program of the Shell Tabangao Ladies Circle (STLC) in Batangas City.  She smiles when I appear shocked, but she’s done her research. 

The DepEd’s SBFP allocates a total of P16 per child (P15 per meal; P1 for logistics like cooking utensils, office supplies for reports, minimal transportation expenses, water, LPG, charcoal, firewood, and kerosene) for 120 days. Even privately-funded feeding programs like Jollibee’s “Busog, Lusog, Talino (BLT)” and Ateneo de Manila University’s “Blueplate” allot P11 and P11.50 per child respectively.