Fats, Vitamins and Minerals

To celebrate a month AFTER my partner’s birthday, we decided to go to the university and eat at our favorite Cititop/Khas Foodhaus, meet with a friend from the old BBS days (I haven’t seen her in probably 7 years!), check out the model houses constructed by the UP Building Research Service, and most importantly, see Oscar Delas Alas, PAGASA’s own astronomy pioneer, who will soon be retiring from the PAGASA observatory also based on campus.

The last time I saw Oscar was probably summer evening of 2003, after he suffered a stroke and was recuperating. He was outside the PAGASA building with the telescope. When we went there last week, I was quite shocked to see that he seemed to have gotten worse; now using a cane to walk and had a bit of difficulty speaking. Nevertheless, my partner and I had a long discussion with him about space and time and such things. And while we were on the topic of “objective reality”, one of the striking things that Oscar said was that “observations are propositions made by scientists based on their own intuitions.”

(Photos below). With Ruben, who guides visitors on the stargazing program of PAGASA. The first two photos are taken on the roof of the small PAGASA building where the old telescope is installed and is still being used for observing sunspots. On the roof, Ruben showed us how to locate both the north star and the southern cross. The third photo below is taken on the ground just in front of the PAGASA building. It shows Ruben adjusting the telescope which is used to view the planets. Through this telescope, we got a glimpse of three planets, Venus, Saturn and Jupiter. I guess we were lucky to see all three in one evening. It was a bit hard to see the stars, though, because of the city’s light pollution (this pollution is very visible on the first two photographs). In the countryside where there is no light pollution, stargazing is very different - when you look up to the evening sky the stars set against the darkness look as if the sky is a low dome with the stars about to fall upon your head!

I just texted an ex-colleague at the university asking for Dr. Honrado “Hony” Fernandez’s cellphone number. My ex-colleague texted back that Hony died two years ago, April 26, 2005. He died of a heart attack, he was only 57 years old. I was shocked. I didn’t know - I was in Holland at that time. Anyway, my partner and I were meaning to get in touch with Hony, who was my teacher in Industrial Design way back 1987/88, to get some advise on vernacular architecture. Hony was one of very few teachers I had at university who had a very strong philosophy of the vernacular, of indigeneity, of the relationship between construction and material culture and the living environment in design and architecture. I suppose Hony was one of very few teachers I had at university who had a very strong philosophy of anything! My God, how horrible it is that he is gone, he was too young …

We seem to be living in a world that kills the most intelligent and socially sensitive people, whilst rewarding those who are the most aggressive, exploitative, and parasitic. Surely, those last three are the most capable of surviving this world greedily indulged in influence, prestige, power.

I thought of Oscar and his work on variable stars. His remark about scientists made me think that he is probably one of those few who have little interest in wielding power and authority through science, but rather admit more to a devotion towards knowledge and its limits. If astronomy is his life then I truly hope he doesn’t “retire.”

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