I’m proud to be a Josenian! Kudos to USJ-R!

For tonight’s special presentation on our talkshow Straight from the Sky, we bring you a talk on the joys of flying with the Cebu Aero Flying Club. We all know that Cebu is located at the center or in the heart of the Philippine archipelago, therefore we should be the hub for the aviation industry. And we are! Cebu for instance hosts the biggest flying school in Aviatours, where at one time they had close to 200 foreign students taking a flying course. Alas, the crash of Sec. Jesse Robredo and Capt. Jessup Bahinting put their flying school on hold, which should not be.

As I learned from this interview with the Cebu Aero Flying Club, the Mactan Airport lies within an hour’s flight from more than 30 airports all over the Visayas. This is important for those in flying schools so they can fly into all types of airports or runways… and return into an international airport. That is a flying experience a student pilot in many major cities cannot get because small planes are not allowed to land in many international airports. How lucky we are in Cebu! I hope they don’t change things here.

Of course in this show we talk about the joy of flying because whether you like it or not… before you can fly a huge Boeing 777 or a giant double-decker Airbus 380, you must first learn to fly a small Cessna 150. But you can never fly a small plane or even a radio controlled one unless you have a love for flying airplanes. I submit that I’m a frustrated pilot… after all, I was on the verge of signing up to join the Philippine Air Force (PAF) but my father didn’t want me to take flying. But that didn’t stop me from my love of aviation.

So tonight we have with us the officers of the Cebu Aero Flying Club, with President Chris Darza, Andrew Co and former Rep. Alvin Sandoval, who will share what got them hooked into flying small airplanes. Both Andrew and Alvin flew me and my son Jesus Valeriano on their Cherokee 140 for his first ever flight on a small plane… that got him hooked into flying.

So watch this very interesting show on flying tonight on SkyCable’s channel 61 at 8:00PM with replays on MyTV channel 30 on M-W-F. After this shoot, Chris Darza got Capt. KhmarBala to fly me on his beautiful CTLS from Mactan to Bohol and back. It was indeed a great day for an interview on flying.

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    Last Friday, the local dailies came up with a headline about the girl involved in the sex video scandal that rocked my alma mater the University of San Jose-Recoletos (USJ-R). But it was a happy ending when USJ-R President Rev. Fr. Enrico Peter Silab said that the school has been helping the student even before the sex video had gone viral. That USJ-R took pains to look for the girl and offer her assistance and ensure her privacy was truly the Christian way of solving this crisis. I’m proud to be a Josenian!

This is not to put down the way the nuns of St. Theresa’s College (STC) solved their similar problem about those girls showing their undies in Facebook. Mind you, this is not the first time that sex video scandals have come out. Long before cellphones had cameras, there were already sex videos in the past. Let me say it here that STC did right in pursuing their high standard of discipline, even in court, while on the other hand USJ-R finds other ways to solve this crisis, by helping the girl finish her studies.

So to all you girls out there, if you’re going to have sex with your boyfriend, don’t bring cellphones inside the room, even if you trust and love your man. You will never know what lies in the future of your relationship.

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    Last Saturday, we spent the Chinese New Year’s Eve at the Marco Polo Plaza Hotel to greet the coming of the Water Snake. Accordingly, this will be a good year for those born in the Year of the Rabbit… hmmm that’s me! After the loud noise from exploding firecrackers and the dragon dance, we settled for a Chinese Lauriat, hosted by Marco Polo’s Hans & Bo Hauri. The guest of honor was Consul General of the People’s Republic of China in Cebu Mr. & Mrs. Zhang Wei Guo and we were with Cebu Chamber’s Sam Chioson, Mrs. & Mrs. Anthony Luy, Mr. Deidre Fischer of the Cebu International School and Ms. Grace Ho, the manager of Cathay Pacific, whom I mistook as a Filipina because she looked like one of us. But she’s a good conversationalist.

We had a very interesting conversation over dinner of double boiled Chicken soup of Abalone, Dried Scallop with Chinese herbs, perhaps one of the best tasting soups I ever tried. Since it was the first time I met the Chinese Consul, I took the opportunity of informing him that we Filipinos never had trouble with China in the past… until Pres. Aquino came into power. In fact I also informed him that if he looked at all the major cities in the world, he would find a Chinatown… be it San Francisco, New York City or Manila… but in Cebu, we have no China town… that’s because our Chinese community have assimilated and absorbed into Cebu society. That gave him food for thought.

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