WHAT A mouthful! I haven’t written a title longer than that.

I just would like to share with you that starting today, I will go to school, which is about 3 kilometers from home, on my new bicycle — the bicycle that blogging bought. I bought it last Saturday and had some practice until Sunday evening. Now, I could feel pain on my back and my legs. But I’m sure, I will get used to this.

But why did I decide to buy a bicycle aside from that I can’t afford a motorcycle?

MY TWO latest posts describe the gravity of the damage caused by the flood that hit my hometown last Friday. I thought that the image of the wreckage that can be seen along the now so desolate highway would melt the hearts of the people and stimulate them to introspect. I was wrong.

Last Sunday, two days after the flood, people still flocked around a cockfight beside the flooded gallera, within a stone’s throw, affected families were still shoveling out mud from their houses.

In Ladol (one of the flooded villages) people continued celebrating their fiesta. It could have been a sign of moving on until a drunken brawl left several people wounded and a few more incarcerated.

FOUR DAYS after, you can still feel the agony caused by the flood to more than 600 affected families. The following are pictures taken at Purok Maharlika, on the way to our school. According to a friend who works at the Provincial Capitol told me that the flood had caused greater damage in Ladol, a coastal village.

IT HAPPENED again after almost eight years — only, it’s stronger this time.

I thought it wouldn’t rain as hard as it did yesterday. When we arrived from Marbel at about half past three yesterday, the sky was not really dark. After my last class, it started to drizzle. Then the wind started to blow. Soon after, the sky darkened and a heavy downpour followed.

The students who were getting ready to go home started to worry. There were only few vehicles on the school grounds so some of them started walking under the rain out of fear that the rain would not stop until nightfall.

I told my co-teacher that it was the strongest rain I have seen in years. She told me that it was just normal. But I had a gut feeling that if it would last for half an hour more, a flashflood of the same magnitude of the one that took place on November 1, 2000, would hit our town.

THIS MORNING our librarian gave us photocopies of an article from the broadsheet about DepEd’s implementing guidelines on the 6-hour workday for teachers.

I read it carefully and I realized that it actually didn’t shorten the number of hours of work in a day. It only limits the number of hours of classroom teaching to six. The remaining two hours would be spent for teaching-related activities like, preparation of lesson plans, visual aids, rubrics, home visitation, consultation, among others. It doesn’t make a really big difference.

Nevertheless, I appreciate it because it is never easy to facilitate classroom activities for more than six hours. When I reach home after each school day, I could feel that my leg muscles are sore. I also don’t talk a lot at home, else, I damage my vocal folds. I even told my mother, “Nay, sayo jud ko ani  matigulang.” [Mother, with this stress, I'll face old age early.]

Good thing, teachers who are given loads of more than 6 hours a day are entitled to an additional compensation computed at the same hourly rate of the regular compensation. That means, since I’m given a seven-hour load each day, I’m entitled to another one hour worth of compensation. (Yay, I won’t need to ask for cash advance. Haha.) However, when there’s no available funds (which is true for most schools), an hour of overtime work shall be counted as 1.25 hours of service credits.

I HAVE no right to complain.

In many schools in the country today, teachers have to teach inside classrooms with more than 80 students for more than seven hours a day. They spend their own money for their visual aids and other instructional materials. Their classrooms are neither well ventilated nor sound proofed. Moreover, they teach low success learners.

In my case, my students are fast learners–the cream of the crop of SOCSARGEN, in fact. Our classrooms are good and our facilities quite better than what regular schools have. The only problem I have is that I’m teaching for seven hours a day. The only break I have is the 20-minute recess and the 60-minute lunch break. You see, the number of hours we spend in school is more than eight hours. Another thing is the pressure from our heads. They are expecting us to perform well–to maintain our school’s reputation.

I admit it’s very difficult. But then again, I have no right to complain. And there’s no use complaining. Thousands of teachers in the country have raised their voices since long ago about the wretched situation of teachers (so wretched that many of us are buried in loans or payday loans) and Philippine public schools, in general. Anything happened so far?

I WAS surprised that clicks are coming in from Google search results for the keywords “system loss charge.” That’s just a little number of visitors. Very little, in fact. But I am glad that I have helped explain to one or two people who wanted to know what the system loss charge really is.

It’s for my post, Meralco System Loss Charge as Explained in Physics, where, like actress Judy Ann Santos, I conveyed the idea that system loss is just normal. I didn’t say though that Meralco has been doing good all along.