Warrior Pilgrimage

Featured at pinoyapache.blogspot.com on April 25, 2011.

THE TALL MARINE manning the gate gave me a hard punch on the solar plexus. I winced and retreated away when the Marine raised his Armalite, butt first, towards me. I faked the hurt so I could evade his aggressive challenge and the impending rifle butt blow. I succeeded there but I bade goodbye to my dinner and my freedom...READ MORE (Press CTRL + mouse click)

Featured in WARRIOR PILGRIMAGE on January 9, 2011.

I RODE ASTERN ON the motor tugboat, M/T Koala. The double-engined little tug crossed the Mactan Channel from Pier One, Port of Cebu, to the seas off Bagacay Point to rendezvous with another tug, the M/T Scorpion. It is May 23, 1986 and it is near dusk.

Going back, I applied for a slot of apprentice marine engineer with the National Stevedoring and Lighterage Corp.1 (NSLC) where they own a fleet of tugs and barges. A ...

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on July 1, 2010

IT HAS BEEN THIRTY-five years since I played my first basketball game. It was just a pick-up game of three a side. A one goal affair. Then and there, I sprained my middle finger. I was a fourth grader. Nine years later, I played my first collegiate varsity game.

I suited up for the “new” Cebu State College of Science and Technology (CSCST) Builders in 1983 in the now-defunct Cebu Amateur Athletic Association (CAAA)1. ...

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on October 6, 2009

SUNDAY, JULY 26, 2009. I went to the Mandaue City Reclamation Area to watch an ongoing airsoft battle on an open lot nearby the Cebu Doctor's University. It is my first time to see an airsoft event. I saw grown-up men running; their rattling plastic weapons spewing off plastic pellets at opponents. The ground is very muddy but they were very serious with their game. I was quite amused and I shook my head unable to believe ...

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on September 1, 2009

ROAMING AROUND AND anywhere is something that my physical body is well attuned to. My genes, for a good part, might have dictated my love for walking and hiking on trails; but it is the value of my personal freedom of movement that have goaded me to climb mountains where, upon its ridges, slopes, forests and crags, I become one of its myriad elements.

There is no description, whatsoever, of the joys I have ...

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on November 26, 2008

My first Sony® experience is with my younger sister's Walkman®. Whenever I would travel in the countryside I would borrow it from her. If she refused I would sneak it out without her knowing. In time, her Walkman would be my constant companion on the road.


Riding in buses in rural Philippines during the early '80s is not your idea of an ordinary and comfortable ride like we used to enjoy today. The ...

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on August 11, 2008.

THE YEARS 1992 TO 1998 were, without a doubt, my finest years as a mountaineer and an outdoor enthusiast. I was caught in a vortex of outdoor activities that my club, the Cebu Mountaineering Society (CeMS) have organized, starting from my initial climb at Mount Pangasugan in Leyte, which was very unforgettable, reaching a high crescendo with the ascent of the country’s highest peak in Mount Apo on 1994 and tapering ...