YEAR 2018, Year of the Earth Dog, will usher in joy and upliftment for BARP (Blessed Association of Retired Persons Foundation, Incorporated), according to BARP President/CEO Prof. Federico A. Balanag. The Founding President confidently made this unflinching assertion in an interview with him right in the corridor fronting his main office in the 7-storey BARP Building at Buhagan/Bokawkan) Road, Baguio City. The interview was calm, not an ambush, so his responses were taken as well thought of.
“It is surely a blessing to the BMPC [BARP Multi-Purpose Cooperative], the BARP Foundation, Inc. [BFI] and the BARP Center,” he assured in a thankful mood. Continuing, he said that right now the Benguet Builders is busy tiling the basement of the 7-storey structure of the BARP Building. Engr. Isabelo O. Abing, the General Manager of Benguet Builders, he informed, has completed the tiling of the basement and its stairway including the hand railings leading to the same basement and ceilings of the restrooms. These were done with the cooperating help of a religious group that now and then holds religious activities in the premises. Tiling of the flooring of the hostel and its accessory rooms and the installation of better stairways from the rooftop down to the basement as safety device on time of calamities are underway.
Most rentable areas from the basement to the roof deck, Balanag added in his informatory explanations, are now leased. Protective perimeter fencing of the Center, however, is not yet started so that putting and planting of decorative plants have not yet substantially begun. So also the envisioned multi-level parking space the construction of which City Mayor Mauricio Domogan promised to help while Congressman “Mark” Go promised to include in his congressional budget the putting up of a more useful overpass/flyover near the BARP premises as well as pedestrian passages nearby. These lanes and the building elevator will be of great boon to the elderly and other people of disability, especially the blind whose school is situated along Buhagan Road just downward from BARP.
Upon final completion of the main BARP Center by the BFI 19th Charter Day on July 24, 2018, with still the help and prayers of humanitarian people and organizations, BARP will still embark on the envisioned BARP village for Retirees, where home for the aged, Philippine-style, will be made available and the traditional Filipino love for aged parents and grandparents will be edifyingly experienced. He also intends to get the potent aid of President Duterte in the development of a beach resort in Bauang where the elderly can have practices for a final swim (dip, in the words of Auditor Urbanozo) to the great beyond.
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During the past weekend, I hip-hopped to the Ilocos shores of the West Philippine Sea to visit relatives and friends with emphasis on those whose names are found in the enrollment list of BARP, be it in the Foundation or the Multi-Purpose Cooperative. In the stint, I found not only things focused on BARP but also those of other human concern or interest. One of such was a water system in a part of Barangay Ubbog in Santiago, Ilocos Sur. What I found was one which one would not believe unless he/she had observed it personally.
Usually, in those parts of Ilocos, one method of getting water is by drilling then pumping out the water or drawing it out from the man-made well. But in the household I visited, the underground water struck by drilling would come out and flowed to a required direction for the hose, even to houses in higher elevation than where the drill was made, as if the body of water was a hosed brook gravitationally flowing upward. A second amazing phenomenon in the household was the super-low cost of electricity consumption to which the ISECO inspectors could only bow down in surrender. There was no cheating being perpetrated, the inspectors could only testify. They changed the gauge meter three times but to no change of the maximum of 43 to 45 pesos only. I was shown the inspection billing. They tried letting electric lights, electric fans and refrigerators run as long as they wished but no increase in expected payments was incurred. But then, but then, the house would not welcome any wall clock. The clock would just give up and stop functioning in a matter of short time. DOST people should find fun time to find out why. You can go there because the house is along the newly renovated and widened barangay road that hitherto was a puzzle if it was intended for cars or carabaos only.
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My year 2018 paternal greetings to you 4-Sisons in the States. Of course, me together with your late Mama Susie Ancheta Balweg and my late abalayans Ding and her husband then Justice Sison of the Court of Appeals.