My other cousin (I have so many cousins right now) showed me this morning the areas where we used to hike with our cousins and friends. When we had more stamina than sense, we would climb the mountain that our town is known for, or hike down to go to Taal Lake.

So there was this pathway that led us down to the foot of the ridge and terminated at a cold spring water pool. A few meters is the edge of the Lake. It was a perfect spot for us restless teenagers to swim, rinse ourselves, and have a picnic. It was a time when Taal Lake was not polluted.

This forested pathway has now become a garden resort. We no longer have access to the spring water pool since this area has been in private hands.

We then drove to another spot where my uncles watched the big Taal Volcano eruption right before the Covid 19 lockdown started. One uncle is a professor of geology at UC San Diego, who was the dissertation advisor of our current Dept of Science and Technology secretary. The other uncle was a metallurgist/materials engineer who initially was a geologist when he first enrolled in UP. They were like little kids giddy with excitement as they watched the fireworks. That was a fond memory for those who were there because one of those uncles passed—he died of Covid during the early days of the lockdown.

Not far from this place is my dad’s property that was handed down to him by my grandma. It has almost the same views of the lake. When he retired early from the university, he didn’t know what to do with himself so he tried to do some silviculture system there.

One time my older sister and I drove our pickup truck to that mountain hideaway and picked up our father. He said he wanted to build a resthouse there. Of course that was fanciful thinking as we knew there was no money for such and he was already sick.

Now I’m inspired to do the same after I saw what other people had done to their properties with their own private views of the lake and the volcano that could rival Tagaytay. I have no money but I can work on the land title. I mean my dad died without any of us fixing the estate. We might get victimized by landgrabbers since there are resorts sprouting like mushrooms in our town.

And just like that, it’s as if the universe is conspiring… My architect uncle—my dad’s younger brother—went to the wake this morning and he just happened to drop by because he was in town. He told me he was fixing the right of way to one of the family’s properties, a farmland at the foot of that same mountain. That farm was an orchard when another uncle, a horticulturist—more specifically, a pomologist—had grown mangoes there. I remember carting baskets upon baskets of ripe mangoes at the back of our pickup truck. One basket contained 25kg of ripe mangoes. And I drove that freaking truck fully loaded with mangoes to our university.

The problem at that time was, ok, you’re an academic putting into practice your expertise. However, you are a bad businessman. You can grow tons of mangoes but you don’t have a ready market for it. 🤦🏻‍♀️ My professor uncle poured so much money into that farm but he wasn’t making money from the produce. It was just like hobby farming.

Anyway, now that this younger uncle is starting to fix some estate matters, I think it’s about time my siblings should stop being lazy and we should start doing the same.

I didn’t realize how tired I was yesterday. Only when I read my blog entry yesterday, writing “diseased” instead of “deceased” did I realize I was already zombie-walking. I was almost brain-dead with exhaustion.

It was a long day today. We finally laid her to rest.