A "taytayan" from the past to the future!

Last Wednesday afternoon, I took a break from the hectic Press Freedom Week activities to attend the official launching of “Taytayan” (Bridge in Cebuano) a Heritage Advocacy group that aims to preserve what we can from our past in order to bridge the gap of the Cebuanos of tomorrow who have little or no knowledge of Cebu’s rich cultural heritage and history. The official launching of Taytayan was done at the Yap-Sandiego Ancestral House, which I consider the oldest house in the Province of Cebu. It may arguably be the oldest house in the Philippines.

This well-preserved antique house is situated in Cebu’s famous Parian District, just a stone’s throw from the old “Bomberohan” and the famous Casa Gorordo across the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation, Inc. headquarters. I support this group because of my love of history. More so that I too grew up in Parian in the old Avila home in Ibarra, which my parents built from the remnants of the Segura Ancestral house which was burned at the start of World War II.

The Taytayan group is led by Cebu’s foremost Dance Maestro Val Sandiego, Gil Maningo of “Kulas” Shirts, Balbino Guerrero or Tatay Bino, Jose “Chilet” Hermosa of Parian, Gavin Bagares, also a founding member of the Kaguikan sa Parian Foundation, Inc., Mr. Paul Melendez who composed the “Mabuhi Ka Sugbuanon” and Joy Uy of Continental Airlines who also resides in my old street in Ibarra.

For its debut Taytayan will hold an October Festival (it is an affront for us Cebuanos to hold an Oktoberfest when we are not of German descent!) starting with a night-heritage market on Oct.6. On Oct.11, there will be a dinner show featuring “Parian Kagahapon ug Karon” (Parian, yesterday and today) with his eminence Ricardo Cardinal Vidal and Tourism Secretary Ace Durano in attendance. Time to time, I will be featuring stories about Parian of the past, like how the most beautiful Church in Cebu was destroyed, thanks to a dispute between church leaders.

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By now everyone already knows about that big unexpected news from Aboitiz Equities Ventures (AEV). It has decided to sell its shipping subsidiary the Aboitiz Transport System (ATS) which is the original or core business of the Aboitiz Group of Companies. It was indeed unexpected in the sense that the last time the Cebu media had lunch with the executives of the Aboitiz Group of Companies this development wasn’t even in the radar screen. ATS or Aboitiz Shipping is the very heart and core business of the Aboitiz family, something of a Cebuano heirloom. Suddenly it is now being sold to a foreign investor from Kuwait which is another surprise!

Just a slight correction, which was misinterpreted that Negros Navigation (NN) was buying ATS… this is not true. For the past 5 years, NN has been in a court receivership and therefore, it could never even think of buying another shipping company. In truth KGLI-NM the Kuwaiti based company offering to buy ATS already bought out the ailing Negros Navigation, which is for all intents and purposes already a done deal.

As for the AEV-KGLI-NM memorandum of agreement, it would take a few more months to finalize this deal as the buyer needs to look into what they are buying. We don’t expect any takeovers soon, not until after Christmas. That means the Aboitiz brand of service on ATS will continue until this deal is signed, sealed and delivered. In the meantime, we in the media ought to look closely at the KGLI-NM, whether they would “up” the ante and give the Cebuano riding public a far superior service that ATS already gives is customers. All this remains to be seen and later experienced.

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I fully support the call by the Cebu City Council to get rid of the famous lampposts, those “symbols of corruption” that have littered the side streets since we hosted the 14th ASEAN Leader’s Summit a couple of years ago. These “decorative” lampposts are no longer working and therefore useless to sidewalk users. They have indeed become a symbol of everything that is wrong in the government’s procurement system.

Even if these lampposts were not “overpriced” as alleged, the fact that they are no longer in good working order less than a year after the ASEAN summit proves to us that our government bureaucrats bought a very inferior product. Get those posts out!