the bell pretty much governed seminary life. it was probably the most powerful object in the whole of seminary :D in that it dictates what you do at a certain time period hehehe. but now in olps they use a big electric buzzer. dekorasyon na lang yata itong bell.
i remember that being the timekeeper was one of the most envied work assignment back then 
and on the bishop page, its weird coz it says "The Diocese of Sorsogon has two bishops. . ." ???
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fr. gerry del prado commented:
PADS is a boyband, sort of, hehe. it is actually composed of 6 priests (fr treb futol, alex jerus, jun elegado, edu fulay, totoy alcantara and ramil enteria).
It has already presented 2 concerts: PRIESTYLE - at the colegio de la milagrosa, several parishes in sorsogon, imus cathedral and a catholic school in paranaque.and PADS IN LOVE - a valentine concert presented ta the sorsogon gymnasium to raise funds for the diocese of sorsogon home for the clergy. We (i count myself in, as i have been drawm to the group to act as coordinator-manager, glorified alalay actually) have actually been featured in the philippine inquirer after pads in love.
PADS has come out with its eponymous CD, a collection of original compositions by alex j, treb and jun e. musical arrangement by sanni gargallo, at whose g cliff production studios in casiguran the recording was done. (hint: get a copy and help us market it. fr treb still has a lot of copies in sorsogon). PADS actually means Priest-Artists, Diocese of Sorsogon. We hope it's not a very ambitious name, building on a term of endearment (?) that sorsogon uses for priests.
About the two bishops, I suppose that was posted before Bishop Varela retired and the Nuncio appointed Bishop Bastes as auxiliary bishop with right of succession (upon Bp Varela's request in preparation for his retirement). Now, Bishop Varela is retired, and is Bishop Emeritus (with ministry outside the diocese, as he claims in the Corcuera article) and Bishop Bastes is the local ordinary. Incidentally, Bishop Varela is celebrating his Golden Priestly Anniversary this March.
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thanks padre gerry!
Fr. Treb, can u email me updates about the pads? also i'll ask my brod jay to buy a CD from you and mail it to me so that i can feature it here. dont worry coz i wont make mp3s :-P
with all these rules, its no wonder that seminarians are oftentimes wary of the rector's presence.
the different fonts though kinda takes away the "seriousness" of the rules although it may be intentional on the rector's part hehehe (subterfuge baga), the better to mete out those "kneel down" punishments to the unlucky seminarista
sano ronny who maintains the batch 82 blog has some nice pictures posted. as in the old ones pa so head on there now!
here is shown a skit presented during the intrams awards night 1978 (!)
mga sano email us pictures during your time in olps so we can post them here and enjoy (or cringe at) the memories
I also got this about Fr. Corcuera - celebrating his 35th year of priesthood.
news article here
i'm turning to google to post stuff here. and i found out the fr. jureck fernandez is now a priest with the Easter Rite. seems like he went out and now is based in nebraska.
read the news article here abhout the movement to establish the jury system in the philippines
click here for the news article
this is a pic of their seminary. cool ano
this is completely OT, but since i've got nothing interesting to post this will do for the meantime ;D
i accidentally found this while googling about seminaries in the philippines. i never knew that there is an association for married priests. interesting ano?
visit their website here http://www.marriedpriests.com.ph/ . there's an interesting article there entitled "Towards A Clergy-Less Non-Church"
sa olps kaya how many priests na ba went out and got married? hmm
First photo, me and my wife Pauline. This was taken when we attended a function (Exclusive Models' Graduation Night) where my youngest daughter Kym performed a song for the crowd. 2nd photo, the proud dad with the bunso (Kym). Kym is in primary school (Wynn Vale Primary). 3rd photo, kids at home (Xmas Eve '05), first from left is Krishelle, my eldest. She's in 2nd Year of Nursing at the University Of South Australia, middle one is my daughter Kitchie (third in the family) and right side is my son Miko. Miko and Kitchie are both in high school (Golden Grove High). By the way, I got four kids. 4th photo, Kitchie and Kym with a friend when we visited Carrick Hill (a Manor House) here in Adelaide for a day outing.
Me and my wife and four kids (3 daughters and a son) have been here in Adelaide since 1991 as permanent residents. My youngest was born here in 1995. I'm currently employed with RLA (Research Laboratories Of Australia) here in Adelaide.
(sano bong, my apologies for posting this late, nalimutan ko baya :-(u got a nice family there, cute wife and kids. nagulat ako me college ka na palan na aki)
Our heartfelt condolences to the family of Atty. Alwyn Talde ('83) whose mother passed away last friday, January 13, 2006.
Batch 87 reconnected again with some of their long lost batchmates. deets and pix here
our heartfelt condolences to Atty. Wowo Fortes and Family, whose father passed away last December 2005. Apparently, the car he was driving was struck by a speeding CUL bus somewhere in Irosin.
silence in the study hall...
i'll be posting a series of rules posters i found scattered throughout olps last homecoming 2005 just to bring back memories of the time when you had to live by them :D
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! Greetings from Hitler's Nazi Concentration Camp. Spending the holidays with the souls of victims of Holocaust during World War II.
its been a slow week or so here. heheh wala nagpost ng bago. anyways since you all probably took a lot of pictures during christmas why not share them? if you cant post here, send them to our email olpseminarista@yahoo.com and i'll post them ok?
so to start, here's me with my officemates visiting Hongkong Disneyland. this is our xmas party and r&r [finally after 4 years :-) ]
if you go to HK, dont ever forget to buy digital camera or videocam, well anything electronic. its so cheap. its about 50% off philippine price! and u get more savings if u buy the older model (pero brand new pa sa pinas)
btw, cinderella says hi to all sano :P
hope you all have a great time during the holidays and wishing you a peaceful and bountiful year ahead :-)
a view of the library from the garden. i remember the windows used to be big frosted things
a view of the classroom garden from the senior classroom. note the nipa hut
famous for the numerous bayawak living in the septic tank and the junk that used to be piled here.
looks more civilized now doesnt it? perfect place to while away boring math classes, sneak a quick smoke. also notorious venue of umentionable "contests" ;-)
how i dreaded ms. sy's math class! especially solving math problems in front of the class.
the steel windows always remind me of latin class with fr. lorilla who made us climb up the grilles for every mistake in latin grammar. does fr. lorilla still smoke marlboro with snowbear mint candy? :-)
here are some of our gubatnon sano during their cute days. click for bigger pix size
pix courtesy of sano ronny yrurreta
i forgot how this place is called, garden something yata. its the space between the classrooms and the study hall
inside the chapel. under renovation for quite some time now.
still, i like the old chapel. more spacious and more peaceful. hopefully this one looks ok after the renovation
clear as moonlight through the pines...
Still in peaceful dreams I see
The road leads back to you"
(ray charles. georgia on my mind)
I never knew back in the summer of '79 of what I would be into and up to as I was about to embark on a so-called journey... that of a life in the seminary. As I was packing up my clothes and leaving behind some of the stuff dear to me, I was contemplating and played the words time and time again in my mind, "Maybe the reason why I have to be there is because my elder brother Charlie is already in there."." Maybe I am called but definitely I won't be chosen.", and so I thought. By being the youngest of the two in the family, I somehow enjoyed following my brother's footsteps. Murudoy-pudoy baya... I was always looking forward to mingle with his seminarian classmates and friends especially during their free days and listening to their stories in awe while they related them to each other followed with loud laughter. Somehow I felt then that I, considered an outsider, already belonged to this group of young men. As a gawky and naive young boy as I was, I had no inclination that such bold steps (entrance exams, interviews and a couple of days stay in the seminary) would somehow be the start of a life-changing experience for me that I will carry on through life.As I entered the seminary on that very first day of the school year and having that great feeling of being officially called a seminarian, I never noticed how exhausted I was from a hot summer break in Manila in which me and my brother did every summertime with my Dad. Outside on that very day, the sun was shining brightly and chirping "salampatis and mayas" were up in the trees and somehow gave me a slight glimpse of what the future might be... a new day, a new beginning! Raucous young boys running around added to the festive nature of the occasion.
I was thinking, " Gee, this is a huge room (big dorm) and so many beds...". Most of us were engaged in conversations with the usual "kumustahans and taga-diin ka" stuff. Although we felt we were still strangers to each other yet we all knew that we were in for a good time. We heard those strange accents and dialects from each other or so-called "dialect diversity". May mga kurutumon (teeth-grinding accent), odd ones and pure Bicol as well yet we managed to understand what the other guy was trying to say which was a kind of a feat in itself. As I waved goodbye to my Mom, I suddenly realized that "This is it!" and that knocked me back a bit. A sudden surge of feeling of apprehension and sadness was felt by me. Reality had finally set in, and indeed, it would be different from that time on. That feeling lasted only for a few minutes and was followed by a welcoming one especially with the jubilance of nearby classmates which was quite infectious... I started to settle in and once again transformed into a smiling young boy in the face of a crowd. Then the bell rang... a sign for us to follow a life of order, of rules and discipline.
It was not difficult for me to adapt into a so-called regimental lifestyle for having lived with a military father (an air force officer to be exact) and a number of uncles who were all in active military duties at that time but somehow seminary training was different because it wasn't much focussed on the physical aspect although it was a part but mainly it was centered on the spiritual, academic emotional and psychological aspects. Life inside the seminary can be a tough one for a young teenager with normal attitudes of "No Rules", "Rebel Yell", "No Fear", and words such as "Damn if I do, Damn if I don't", "Boys will be boys, as you know it" and the like... because of a huge number of dos and don'ts in which were all should be strictly followed.
As youngsters, we did not realize though that those rules were the ones that would prepare us for the greatest battle that lies ahead until now...life... be it for another 8 years plus for the chosen ones (Philosophy, Theology and on) or life outside the fence (an ex-seminarian living in the outside world). These rules prepared us to become disciplined, tough, tenacious and resolute to any adversity that would one day befall upon us.
We would be able to manage and survive any hardships we might encounter because of those characters embedded into our psyche through those years of training. Elvis Palma (a former classmate of mine during our first year) was right when he was asked by one of the priests with the question, "Why did you enter the seminary?" and he answered in a simple yet profound way and if I'll borrow his exact words again, they went like these, "Father, I entered the seminary because I want to be a P.C. (Philippine Constabulary)." And laughed we did... but if we won't take those words literally but instead dissect them like keen anatomy or physiology students in our final term... for sure we all know that it was the perfect answer. We were all placed there to be trained... to be prepared for something we could not possibly knew at that time.
Seminary life gave me a new meaning of the word friendship because it became real to me. I found lifelong friends when I was there. The bond between "sanos" especially with your own batchmates or as I put it... "my own tribe" could not be exchanged for a dollar. It will always be there and distance won't be a hindrance (for sanos living overseas). It is within you and somehow you can feel it running in your veins (blood-brothers perhaps). A friendship that has stood and survived the test of time. In some point of our lives... past and present, might be sordid and crappy at times and memories that can be so poignant and bleak... all of these can be overshadowed by the memories we spent at OLPS. These memories will haunt us in a nice kind of way.
Sometimes when we get lost in the "wilderness of of the world", what we do to start afresh and renewed is to retrace back the steps we took and curiously enough that always take us back and lead us to the great one... The Our Lady Of Penafrancia Seminary. From there, we regain our strength as we continue to trudge along again with our lives. We always recall those memories as if they are like a drug for us to take to get a fix or a song that we have to rewind and replay to listen to and feel the essence of the melody and message that can give us so much joy. A fading memory perhaps yet most of the remnants are still lurking inside us as if they were digitally encrypted into our brains so we can replay them as we choose to do so with such clarity, crispness and in finer details.
If heroes have to be lauded... we have so many... ourselves included and those people who supported us and helped to mould us. Our parents most especially whose sacrifices for us knows no boundaries, a total one. The priests, faculty members, the seminary personnel and friends outside who were/are one way or the other became a part of the whole saga.
Indeed, it was such a pleasure to be a part of that great institution... that silently watched over us through those times when we were still there and/or choose to go back to visit her... our beloved alma mater. We all know that she can proudly smile because she was able to transform naive, shy and sometimes wild-eyed young boys to become great and legendary men.
(Bomick or bong Miaco of Batch '83, lives in Adelaide, Australia. He works as a research laboratory technologist by day and is a rockin' rollin' axeman by night and most of his free time. you can read more about him here)
