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...