Cebu City: How beautiful she is today!

Another positive note about our hosting the 12th ASEAN Leaders' Summit in Cebu is the fact that because of this event, we went out of our way to beautify Cebu. During one of my tv interviews with my good friend, Joel Mari Yu of the Cebu Investment Promotion Center (CIPC) he described Cebu as a very pretty girl, but she was unkempt, dirty and untidy and without any makeup. Indeed, Joel described Cebu as she's always been for decades - a pretty dirty, smelly and not really nice too look at for tourists to see.

Today thanks to our hosting of the ASEAN Summit and the thousands of workers doing their work even in the night, we have beautified the once plain avenues of Cebu City into something that we've never done before. Who could miss looking at that landscaping, complete with a tartanilla in the island right in front of the Capitol Building? The island dividing Juan Luna Avenue has also been landscaped like it was someone's expensive residence. It is a sight to behold. Thanks to the relentless effort of Mrs. Therese Gonzales of the Cebu City's Parks and Playgrounds.

I'm sure that the general public appreciates what has been done to beautify our thoroughfares taking their usual uneventful ride on a jeepney. If you ask me, they should have done this long ago. But now that those plants and shrubs and flowers are put in place I'm just wondering, how long they can stay beautiful? I had a long talk on the phone with Cebu City's First Lady Margot Osmeña. She too was already thinking ahead that after the ASEAN Summit, our beloved Cebu, now very clean, beautifully dressed complete with makeup might just be destroyed by the ever-present vandals or by sheer neglect.

What Mrs. Osmeña did was to call upon all the barangay captains in the city to seek their assistance in keeping an eye on those beautiful islands. Not only should our barangay officials keep an eye on our landscaped islands they should provide money for their maintenance so that Cebu City would always be pleasing to the eyes not only for the tourists, but for the local residents as well.

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We already wrote about the miracle that happened in the Port of Cebu when Cebu Port Authority (CPA) General Manger Angelo Verdan cleaned up the port of all unnecessary things that shouldn't have been in the port in the first place. I was referring to the squatters who have made the port their permanent home. But all that is gone now and all it really needs is a determined effort and the political will to act.

Under Gov. Gwen Garcia, we are seeing uncanny cooperation between the City of Cebu with Mayor Tomas Osmeña and Cebu Province when as part of our clean up drive, the Squatters Prevention Encroachment and Elimination Division (SPEED) is expected to demolish the famous, but totally unsanitary and dirty-looking Larsian barbecue stalls along Fuente Osmeña, which should never have been allowed in the first place.

But they're not merely destroying Larsian. The Province of Cebu will construct a more orderly, cleaner and sanitary barbecue stalls just a few feet away from the present Larsian except that this time, it would be on Province-owned lot and not on the road which they have blocked for many years. I have made this suggestion a long time ago. For the sake of helping those barbecues stall owners, they ought be given the first crack at renting those stalls. Yes, I said renting because there is no free lunches on this world… everyone pays either their rent or taxes.

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Today Friday, Nov.24th, the Municipality of Carcar is holding its annual Kabkaban Festival 2006, dubbed "The Festival of Lights in Homage to Santa Catalina de Alexandria". Jerry Martin Alfafara, Public Relations Officer of the Carcar Heritage Conservation Society (CHCS) says that this year's Kabkaban Festival is a totally new concept; different from the past festivals held in Carcar. This year, Carcar will also celebrate the declaration of St. Catherine of Alexandria Church as a diocesan shrine of the Archdiocese of Cebu as declared by his Eminence Ricardo J. Cardinal Vidal.

A parade of 216 dancers from nine school dance contingents wearing specially designed lantern headgear and carrying pairs of hand lights that would illuminate Sta. Catalina street, Carcar's famous "Heritage street" where tourists can see Carcar's main attraction, the oldest and most famous heritage houses, where houses built during the Spanish era are mixed with houses made during the American Commonwealth years. The town of Carcar is especially close to my family; after all, the Avila Family originated in Carcar. My late aunt Sister Adela Visitacion Avila of ICM was stationed there next to the main church that her grandfather finished when he was the assigned parish priest in Carcar.

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