Like our molave ( Vitex parviflora )

Local folks call it mulawin. The wood is hard and also highly-prized, like the kamagong. Now rare, I consider myself fortunate to have one towering resident in my backyard.

Isn't it queer that while the government asks us to plant more trees, it simultaneously allows logging to continue? To those who become rich at the expense of our country's forests - may your tribe become extinct! To our hypocritical leaders who play footsies with chainsaw-wielding buwayas, may God remove you from the gene-pool together with these thieves!

The firetree and Kalayaan

This sprawling firetree beside Kalayaan Hall in UP Diliman is a mute witness to smoldering passions and fiery idealism. We entered UP during the dark days of our history as freedom-loving people... How can one ever forget our dedicated and super-intelligent professors like Augustus Mamaril (Embryology), Remedios Roderos (Genetics), Filipinas Natividad (Physiology), Prescillano Zamora (Botany), Reynaldo Yago (Invertebrate Zoology), Nanding Josef (Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy) and Lydia Pena (English) ? To them we are most grateful for the high standards they set. We really strove to abide by the famous bluebook inscription - honor and excellence. The main library became a second home where we pored over thick volumes, hid in-demand books behind shelves of nondescripts, wrote rejoinders to loathsome pages, slept and and feasted on a storck or two ... Heady days spiced by long walks, ikot rides, tedious hours in microscopy, indignation rallies, fraternity rumbles, Rodic's tapsilog, "terror professors" and police truncheons...