Posts tagged with Upsilon

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March 31, 2009

Brief visit to Aquino Museum, Tarlac

A few weeks ago, largely in preparation for the IAMNINOY summit we were helping out in, two of my brods and I went to the Aquino Museum in Hacienda Luisita, Tarlac to get some materials and to accomplish other errands.

It was just a half-day trip. We left Manila before 7 AM, arrived in Tarlac by 10, did our thing and arrived back in Manila before 2 PM.

It was my first visit to the museum, which apparently has been open for a few years already. They have a very interesting collection of Aquino memorabilia, including photos of Ninoy I’d never seen nor imagine would exist before. On display, too, were the clothes that he was wearing and his other accessories when he was gunned down, and a replica of the room where he was detained for years, with the original furniture and other things.

The place is pretty big. The manager graciously accommodated us despite us being the only visitors that time of the day, and they didn’ teven make us pay the entrance fee anymore.

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March 30, 2009

It’s been a while drink

A few weeks ago, I had dinner and drinks with my STAND-UP friends in the outgoing University Student Council. Since our terms are about to end in less than two months, we all decided to go on a ‘farewell’ night out at Conspiracy Bar along Visayas Avenue. There are fourteen of us in USC 2008 (vice-chair, seven councilors, six college representatives) and only three of us were absent that night. It was quite a blast reminiscing and sifting through collective experiences from the student council election campaign all the way through the year, along with our experiences with our colleagues from ALYANSA and KAISA. Ha ha. Oh boy. We ended the night at past five in the morning with personal speeches and messages for everyone.

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January 4, 2009

Caroling with Sigma Delta Phi

The brods went caroling with the Sigma Deltans for a few nights last December to raise funds for our projects. We only started practicing a few afternoons beforehand, but I guess we pulled it off. Last year, the brods were caroling by ourselves, so this is a pleasant change. We were able to raise enough funds to kick off our activities this year.

Caroling with Sigma Delta Phi Caroling with Sigma Delta Phi Caroling with Sigma Delta Phi Caroling with Sigma Delta Phi Caroling with Sigma Delta Phi Caroling with Sigma Delta Phi

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December 10, 2008

A heavy Christmas workload

This has got to be my most hectic Christmas season yet. From big campus and national campaigns to extra-curricular functions, and almost none of them related to Christmas.

This week, for example, as part of the Defend the Office of the Student Regent campaign of KASAMA sa UP (Katipunan ng mga Sangguniang Mag-aaral sa UP), we’re going to have a twelve-hour concert this Friday, right after the broad multi-sectoral mobilization in Makati against the Arroyo administration’s attempt at Charter Change.

This week is also the 12th anniversary week of STAND-UP (Student Alliance for the Advancement of Democratic Rights – UP), where starting last Saturday, we’ve been having daily activities, from an all-day road painting, to an alliance congress to a cultural night tonight to an alumni night this Saturday.

In the University Student Council, we’ve also been having our last activities and assemblies for the year. We’ve just co-launched the Cine Veritas Human Rights Festival and wrapped up Karolfest yesterday, then there’s a big University Convocation tomorrow–and that’s not all, I still have to produce our last newsletter for the year.

For the past weeks up until this coming Friday, we’ve also been having weekly events and functions in Upsilon Sigma Phi for our 90th anniversary. We had our annual car stuffing and food stuffing event last Friday.

I haven’t even mentioned the increasing pile of academic workload for this semester. And speaking of law school, my block organized a forum this Friday, about judicial integrity, then we’re also having the annual Malcolm Madness this Saturday.

Next week, there would still be preparations for the Lantern Parade, then there’d be the KASAMA sa UP NC Meet, and to cap it all off, an All UP Student Councils Assembly which promises to be a stressful and heated assembly of student councils with conflicting ideologies and interests.

So, where’s the Christmas spirit? Where are the Christmas parties? I haven’t had time for any! Masyadong maraming kailangang isipin, gawin at napakaraming problema lang talaga sa UP at sa Pilipinas. I need to cheer up, and well, gear up for another year soon.

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December 3, 2008

Upsilon Day of Roses & Pictorial ’08

One day every November, the resident fellows convene before dawn at Quezon Hall for an annual frat pictorial ala class picture on the occasion of our anniversary. It has to be taken before half past six in the morning because any later than that and the sun would be high enough to wash out the background. We barely made it on time this year. I’ve been taking the photographs ever since I joined early in 2007.

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November 25, 2008

Upsilon Relay Race & Upsilon Gives Back

Last Friday, as part of the month-long series of activities that the resident fellows of Upsilon Sigma Phi prepared for the fraternity’s 90th Anniversary, we held a joint medical and legal mission and free lunch for the members of the UP Manininda, the union of food vendors in campus, and their families.

The Friday before that, we held a fun relay race at the Palma Hall parking lot where teams of three bested each other by clocking in the fastest time in accomplishing a relay of tasks and obstacles.

Congratulations to my batchmates who organized the activities!

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November 12, 2008

Upsilon Sigma Phi 90th Anniversary

The Upsilon Sigma Phi, the oldest Greek-letter fraternity in Asia, is on its 90th year this year, and the resident fellows are celebrating it with a series of events and projects. Hope to see you in one of our activities!

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September 20, 2008

The dictator and his brothers

At this time of the year when the country remembers the horrors and the atrocities of the Martial Law years imposed 26 years ago, my fraternity, the Upsilon Sigma Phi, traditionally gets some flak for, well, being the fraternity of the late dictator, Ferdinand Marcos and some of his alleged cronies and allies, from Roberto Benedicto to Estelito Mendoza to name some.

The standard way of neutralizing the flak is to invoke the memory of the traditional political opposition that fought the dictatorship, from the likes of Salvador “Doy” Laurel, Joker Arroyo to Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino, Jr.

Rarely is it done any other way. Today, let me take the opportunity to complicate the apparent contradictions further to invoke the memory of communist martyrs Merardo Arce and Melito Glor, martyred rebels, fraternity brothers all the same, who integrated with the masses and took the armed means of liberation, and from whose honor the names of the Southern Mindanao Regional Operations and the Southern Tagalog commands of the New People’s Army are named after.

Cliche as it may sound, we must always look at our present conditions without disposing of the lessons of the past. At times when basic conditions of widespread poverty and oppression persist, our remembrance must transcend mere commemoration, to a realization that perhaps the same roots that bore the resistance of the Marcos years, has only entrenched itself further and as such, creates similar tragic conditions and creates the need to sustain the struggle for genuine change.

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August 27, 2008

Ninoy was not alone

Last Thursday, some of my brods and I went to Tarlac City in Tarlac to join the provincial government’s commemoration ceremony of Ninoy Aquino’s 25th death anniversary. We left UP pretty early and arrived at the province around nine in the morning. Before proceeding to the provincial capitol, we also passed by the municipal hall in Concepcion, Aquino’s hometown, and where he was once Mayor. At around ten, we arrived at Tarlac City to meet the governor, Victor Yap, who is another brod. The commemoration ceremony was held and I was even asked to give a spontaneous speech in front of all the elected provincial officials and employees. We went back to UP a little past lunch time.

That night, we held a memorial at the theater of College of Law, also in honor of Ninoy Aquino.

25th death anniversary Ninoy Aquino

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August 20, 2008

Ninoy Aquino 25th Martyrdom Anniversary

Ninoy Aquino 25th death anniversary

If the project I was handling with the frat wasn’t in honor of Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino, Jr.’s 25th death anniversary, I would have begged off from the very beginning. All the stress and the qualms are nothing, after all, to the late senator’s martyrdom.

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