Kahimunan Festival in Laak

Gov Tyron Uy joins the celebration of the 9^th Kahimunan festival in Laak on September 21, 2019 with other guests and officials. (M. Lasaca/ID Comval)

Heroes in Action ...

... at the Bayanihan Sa Paraalan 2019 Build in Comval held

Compostela Valley Province--- Bayanihan sa Paaralan 2019 School Build took its official starting day on its estimated 22-day duration in the 3 municipalities in the province, Compostela, New Bataan and Pantukan.

The simultaneous kick-off ceremony to the construction of classroom buildings commenced on September 20, 2019 in various school sites identified as geographically isolated and depressed areas (GIDA) in Pagsabangan, New Bataan, Barangays Panansalan and Side 4, Mangayon in Compostela, and Sitio Sapanglubog, Brgy Tibagon, Pantukan.

Again, following the Bayanihan concept, the provincial government through its different offices led the building of the classrooms along with the municipal and barangay LGUs, national agencies and other private partners. One of which is at Purok 3, Brgy. Panansalanan, Compostela were the Provincial Administrator’s Office under Provincial Administrator Virgilia Allones, Provincial Human Resource Management Development Office, Compostela Valley Scholarship Program, CVPH Laak partnered with LGU Mawab, LGU Compostela and the Department of Education to build the 1 unit-2 classroom building.

Department of Education-Comval represented by Mr. Ruben Reponte thanked the provincial government under Gov. Tyron Uy, the LGUs and the rest of the partners as well as the volunteers for supporting the program.

Panansalan, with its green, lush and mountainous surroundings is also a big challenge in the part of the students living in Purok 3 as most of them will have to walk more or less 8 kilometers to reach the nearest school.

“Mas nindot na ang sistema sa edukasyon sa karun kay makita man gyud nato ang tabang sa gobyerno.” said  Madonio Jacinto, Purok-3 Chairman of Panansalan.

He added that the community has about 39 households with farming as their means of livelihood where residents raise chickens, goats, pigs and plants vegetables for consumption and to generate income for their daily needs.

"Nindot kay makatabang ang bag ong eskwelahan nga mahimo pinaagi sa Bayanihan Sa Paaralan 2019 Build. Dako ang matabang ani sa amua ilabi na ug Sabado ug Dominggo kay makatabang amung mga anak sa uma kay makauli man dayun kumpara sa una nga layo ang eskwelahan.  Ug karun nga naa nami bag ong eskwelahan, possible kaayo nga makahuman amuang mga anak sa high school kay dili na maproblema ug kwarta pambalon, ang importante kaon nalang amuang atimanon," explained Marah J. Magno, a resident of P3 Panansalan.  (Jasteen P. Abella, ID COMVAL)

Is airline food really so bad?

My column in Mindanao Daily, BusinessWeek Mindanao and CagayanTimes

I AM frequent flyer around the globe since my 21st birthday. 1974, my first international flight took me from Germany to Norway. 3 hours. Not a big deal. But, I remember, I  just peeled back the plastic off a freshly-delivered tray right off my airplane’s trolley cart and the mess looking back at you is a grim one. The fault may not lie with the chef, though, but in the plane’s design. Everything is reheated. Sure.

The very nature of air travel, as well as how the plane is built and how it adjusts to high altitudes, make food preparation fundamentally more difficult. There are some technical limitations to being high in the air that make it far simpler to just reheat pre-made food, rather than attempt to actually cook from scratch — particularly in the pressurised air of the plane’s cabin.

Although planes routinely cruise at altitudes of around 40,000 feet, the pressure of the cabin is brought back down to more comfortable altitudes of between six and nine thousand feet above sea level. Even those lowered altitudes, though, are still enough to slow down cook times considerably.

It’s not just the difficulties of cooking, though. Even the food service encourages heat-and-serve style meals. The preference in hot airline meals is for pre-cut, reheated meats, usually swimming in sauce, like boeuf bourguignon - actually one of my favorite dishes. In part, the sauce works to counteract the dryness of the pressurised air cabin. But both the sauce and the slow reheat time also suit today’s blunt-edged airline cutlery sets, which have either no knife or an un-sharpened one. Because it's been so overcooked, you can cut it with a fork.

“Airlines have discovered that, if you also pre-cut the meat, you practically don’t need a knife,” says Guillaume de Syon, a professor at Albright College in the US state of Pennsylvania who studies the history of technology, particularly aviation. "Because it's been so overcooked, you can cut it with a fork." Perhaps the biggest consideration, though, is simply available space.

Within the years, I traveled to Asia and the U.S. Yes sure: more passengers, bigger planes, less attention to individual meals. Please keep in mind, I haven't be a First Class Passenger. That's another story, isn't it?

Anyway, today’s passenger planes are designed to carry well over 300  passengers, all of whom expect to be fed on roughly the same schedule. Before the popularization of the jet in the 1960's, though, let's note that passenger manifests were small, usually fewer than 50 people, giving flight attendants time to devote attention to each passenger’s meal service.

Some of those early hot options would seem unrecognizably lavish to today’s traveller, with menus that featured cooked-to-order omelettes, or mobile carving stations wheeled from seat-to-seat by an attendant. With hundreds to serve instead of dozens, though, today’s flight attendants simply no longer have the time to prep individual trays. Instead, the trays need to arrive ready to go.

The large array of food options on offer to airplane passengers in the 1960's and 1970's simply doesn’t exist in most air travel anymore. But, that doesn’t mean the menu has completely disappeared. It’s just been replaced by menus of another sort. Free unlimited wine, champagne and liquors? Once upon a time ... ! I remember a flight from Berlin to Moscow in 1979: bottomless Vodka. Heaven forbid!

In the last decade, the number of entertainment options aboard the average airplane have exploded — and the design of the seats and cabin have changed to reflect this. Nowadays it's designed for your entertainment — not for your food.
Passengers are offered music, often WIFI, and, most importantly, a large menu of films and TV options served up on demand on personalized screens installed in their seat, instead of a single large screen up front. The installation of personalized screens has taken a lot of focus away from the food service, allowing airlines to cut back on food
.
Today, though, ticket cost is the primary measure of competition and cutting out a meal or two can either add to the airline’s bottom line, or give it a little extra room to undercut a competitor’s price. Profits [could be] gained from chopping the kitchen out of the plane almost entirely. "Nowadays airlines are breaking out the expenses and leaving it up to consumers to choose what they want,” said Bob van der Linden, who is the air transportation curator at the US National Air & Space Museum. “It’s the market. This is pure economics. After deregulation in 1978, airlines are free to compete anyway that they want — and they found the best way to compete is low prices."

The shrinking space for food doesn’t, however, mean that airline meals are completely disappearing. But, as airlines look for ways to trim budgets and save space, they’re turning back to those same ground-prepped cold snacks and sandwiches that airlines began their food service with decades ago.“We’re moving back to the box lunches that we started with in the US during the late 1930's, early 1940's. Something that can be easily transported. Nothing terribly perishable, basically a box lunch, a picnic lunch,” said van der Linden.

Happy trip guys! See you abroad!