When drivers can't (don't) read

It’s happening again. I flash my headlights at the car in front of me to get the driver’s attention. We’re on the STAR tollway where the speed limit is 60 kph minimum and 100 kph maximum for private cars. The car ahead of me is hogging the passing/overtaking lane or the leftmost lane of a highway at a steady 80 kph.

There is no response. We go steady and slow until I follow other drivers and just overtake on the inside or on the right lane, which is considered dangerous and designated as a driving offense in some countries. Here, it’s just considered passing.

A little help goes a long way

Librada De Castro Acuzar is not one to take things for granted.

A teacher at the Ambulong Elementary School (ES) in Batangas City, Teacher “Ada”, as she is more popularly known, has worked hard for every break that has come her way.

Life was not easy growing up for the second of 11 siblings. “My father was a farmer, and my mother did not have a job,” she said. They ate off the land and from the proceeds of whatever produce he was able to sell, she added.

Braving Sumaguing Cave

I’d seen pictures and read accounts of experiences at the Sumaguing Cave in Sagada. After a severe muscle cramp made walking torture at the Batad Rice Terraces and made itself felt the day before when we went up and down a hillside to view the hanging coffins, I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to go to Sumaguing Cave.

But I was the “promotor (promoter)”, a label my husband and sister-in-law had given me for getting them to walk kilometers up and down mountain trails to and from the Batad Rice Terraces. I was invincible. I had grit, adventure and spirit – which was slowly sinking at the thought of maneuvering over rocks in the dark, getting wet and rappelling up and down inside the cave.