‘Fests of the North’, city’s ‘grandest’

By Gerry Garcia

THE “Festivals of the North”, virtually a grand cultural event into which the Dagupan Bangus Festival, under the leadership of the city’s first lady vice mayor ever, Belen Fernandez, has expanded were overwhelmingly impressive in the number of crowds and commuters drawn on one hand and participants in the street dance competition on the other. Actually and publicity wise, the Festivals of the North outshined the city’s last fiesta celebration, including all the other previous fiestas.
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Labor Day for OFWs, especially

By Gerry Garcia

LABOR Day celebrated in honor of workers is most often a holiday.  In the US it falls on the first Monday of September . . . unlike here in Pinoyland and in other countries where May 1st is the common choice.

In this country which brags with understandable pride how its economy is buoyed somehow by remittances from millions of OFWs abroad, especially in the Middle East and in Asia, including Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, etc., Labor Day should have a special meaning focused on giving recognition, to our overseas foreign workers, of their deserved role as the country’s unsung heroes. And to the unfortunate ones who fall prey to the deceptions of illegal recruiters, the Administration could do no less than to exert efforts to help or protect them as they are part of the country’s unwitting saviour.
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Bothersome bus terminals?

By Gerry Garcia

Our  fellow-Promdi province of  Pangasinan Antonio Villar Jr., seemingly always in the fore-front in the drive against corruption in the government, hit the headlines again recently when he caused the filing of charges of smuggling against 29 government officials at the Office of the Ombudsman.

This expose on smuggling of luxury vehicles was probably the hottest so far since it involved personnel of the Bureau of Customs (BOC) and the Land Transportation Office (LTO).
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The city’s Bangus FISHtival

By Gerry Garcia

THE celebration of the Bangus Festival, which reeled off last Wednesday, the 16th of this month, was a rousing start headed by the city’s Mayor Al Fernandez at the city plaza in the morning.

Street dancers who were in the parade following the opening ceremony at the city square were an initial phase of the opening day. The second phase of this street dancing is open to everyone on April 26 as, after all, it will signify the city’s festivals of the North Street Dancing Competition.
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PUNCH linking Dagupan to Florida, USA

By Gerry Garcia

MORE than half a century has elapsed since two long lost friends, this writer and the son of the late father-founder of the University of Pangasinan, Blas D. Rayos, Jr., separated ways following graduation from the University of Santo Tomas in the early 50’s, he as student of the College of Medicine and me from the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters.

The wonder of it is that Blas Jr. or “Benny” (as I used to call him then) who had practiced medicine and consequently retired in Indialantic, Florida (USA) and this writer here in Dagupan City were brought together again through the Sunday Punch’s being in the internet. And this is testified to by Benny himself who wrote in his e-mailed letter to me in September 2003: “The Rayos family and I wish to thank you, as Editor of the Sunday Punch. We enjoyed your articles, especially your Editorial Columns which are free of bias and prejudice and you have always shown a sense of fairness and justice for all which sysmbolizes the Freedom to the Press.”
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Let’s get rid of the ‘old’ City Hall

By Gerry Garcia

LACK of parking space continues to hound the city even after it had gone past its 60th year as chartered urban community and half of the proposed circumferential road designed to ease internal traffic has already been completed.

      Even the expected opening of the new multi-B Dawel-Pantal-Lucao Road with its P906-M bridge within this month April is faced by the same problem related to parking space. It probably would lessen congestion on the city’s roads.

      The pedestrian overpasses over AB Fernandez Ave. are incontrovertible indications pointing to a worsening of the parking space problem, especially in the downtown area wherein stands the City Hall — the government center.
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Cha-cha still kicking?

By Gerry Garcia

A businessman in Makati who probably was intrigued by the church’s call for communal action to  resolve the unending government  problem  of graft and corruption  jumped on the chance to put in his two cents worth of view of what’s basically wrong in our form of government.

The temptation to corrupt has always been there, he said, and the best way out would be to come up with a system that does not provide greater temptation to corrupt.
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Happy Easter to all!

By Gerry Garcia

A TWO-fold announcement of outstanding events was released by media by mid-March regarding national sports and a major road infrastructure here. One has to do with the inspiring and highly hoped for triumph of boxing icon Manny “Pacman” Pacquiao in Las Vegas Nevada  over Mexico’s Juan Manuel “Denamita” Marquez while the other, about the alleged opening of the multi-M new Dawel - Pantal-Lucao road on March 15, was something which turned out into sheer koryente, courtesy of local tabloid  NJ which printed the news on its front page. The actual scheduled inauguration by Mayor Al F him-self of the new road, including the bride, was in April, the following month.
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Hope news of Dawel-Lucao road opening not ‘kuryente’

By Gerry Garcia

TODAY, Palm Sunday, is the beginning of the Holy Week (Semana Santa) that will end gloriously on Easter Sunday commemorating the resurrection of Christ.

Palm Sunday is celebrated with palm branch decorations signifying Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem . . . a happy welcoming event which, by the way, almost coincides with an equally victorious event which took place yesterday Saturday — the opening of the new Dawel-Pantal-Lucao road, a 4-kilometer diversion road expected to end (daw) the daily traffic jams gripping the city’s downtown area.
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Jueteng in perpetual motion

By Gerry Garcia

OFF-the-cuff rundown on what makes the GMA regime most “evil”. After joint agreement with ASEAN for stand-off vs. China in the Spratlys RP suddenly left on its own and joined China on a joint seismic “exploration” of RP’s which gov’t politicians and bureaucrats could skim $400 million in kickbacks up to 2010.
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