SCHOOL SUPPLIES

School starts in New York City in a little over a week. As my daughters and I went through the frenzy of buying school supplies and checking lists, a wave of nostalgia suddenly washed over me. It’s almost velada time, so my sensibilities are pointed toward my Assumption years, 1969-1981.

See how many of these school supplies your remember yourself:

Our rulers were likely the skinny transparent ones called ORION, that came in a light blue plastic sheath. There was the short kind, maybe 6 inches, and the foot-long kind. We also had those multi colored ones, that were harder plastic, but also broke more easily. Wooden ones were available, but I was afraid of the edge that was metal and could cut. In college, my friends taught me to glue or tape centavo coins to the back of the Orion which would elevate the ruler, so that when you used it to draw a line (mostly with pencil in math class), the pencil stain on the edge of the ruler would not mark up your paper!

Notebooks: In the early years, we had “Assumption” notebooks, with the Assumption logo in front. I especially remember our writing notebook, where each writing segment had three lines, the bottom two nearer each other, so that we had HUGE capital letters, and small lower case letters. And of course, who can forget our penmanship models, the ones we copied from diligently during our penmanship classes? Someone (I assumed it was one of the nuns) would write a sentence down on a writing paper, paste or staple that to cardboard, and individually wrap those sheets in plastic. We would then pick out a segment each to work on in class. The sentences went something like “Anna ate apples all afternoon” or “Beautiful birds bounced on branches above the babbling brook” so we got to practice each letter several times in a sentence. I've made "writing sheets" for my girls using the computer, and have started to teach them Assumption writing (American cursive is just ugh!) Sad to say, I hear that they no longer teach penmanship at Assumption today? We also had an assignment notebook. It had grids inside, where you wrote down the subject, the date, the homework instructions itself. There was also a box for your parent to initial, to make sure you did your homework! Those notebooks disappeared after our early years, especially after II (Individualized Instruction) got instituted.

In high school, my favorite notebooks were CORONA brand, which were spiral, and had shiny royal blue covers. I would cover the “crown” logo on each notebook with a cute Snoopy sticker. This sticker thing became quite a trademark for me that my U.P. classmates could identify my notebooks from afar because of it. Another popular brand was CATTLEYA. There was a time where it was “uso” to twist away the spiral, then sew the holes up, so now you no longer had a spiral notebook but a flat hand-bound notebook!

Paper: There was such a thing as Grade 1 paper, Grade 2 paper, Grade 3 paper and so on. It was marked in the back of the pad what grade paper it was. How curious that was, now that I think about it! I'm not sure but was it starting in Grade 4, when we now needed several kinds: Intermediate pad paper, ½ lengthwise, ½ crosswise, and ¼ sized pads? And we lugged all 4 kinds to school everyday. We also had a special kind of "lengthwise" pad for spelling, and another special one for "talasalitaan" in Pilipino class.

Pencil box: We could probably write a book about pencil boxes, can’t we? I remember the Japanese kinds, that closed with a magnetic kind of latch. There were those with just one layer, and the fancier ones with several layers, and even secret compartments! My aunt used to get me fancy German ones in Europe, where one side was for pencils, erasers, ruler, and the other side had a complete set of color pencils! When I see those today, I still have the compulsion to buy – all these many years later. At some point, it was Sanrio of some kind, at another point, it was a plain, clear plastic envelope type, that we just decorated with stickers. I also remember the hard plastic boxes, that looked like elongated soap cases. It came semi-opaque in different colors, and again we decorated and personalized each with stickers and dymo-tape labels.

Pencil: Was there any other than Mongol for our first few years of school? Only later did the Snoopy, Mickey Mouse, and Hello Kitty pencils come. We also had the non-sharpening kind, where you just pulled out the used nib, and tucked it away at the bottom to reveal the fresh nib up top. Those were called BENSIA pencils. What grade were we when it became “uso’ to shave away all the yellow paint from the pencil so now you were left with something that looked like a brown twig? (And how did we shave them, with a razor blade?) Most classrooms had a sharpener screwed on to some ledge with a garbage can underneath it. Or we had our own little portable ones tucked away in your pencil case. My favorite sharpener was a silver metal one, that came in a case with spare blades. The cute ones usually did not last long or did not sharpen well.

BALLPENS: When were we first allowed to use ballpens? The very first kinds were BIC. Remember when the barrel only came two ways: solid yellow orange, or transparent white. My brother loved to take our BIC pens, cause he would convert the barrel into a blow gun using wet toilet paper as pellets, (ouch!) After the BICs came MONGOL, and I believe the barrel of that brand was ribbed, and if you were not careful, you got awful kalyos on your writing fingers from those. There was a time when we played with those ballpens and "melted" the barrels over candle flames and twisted them to make our ballpens fancier. If you were not careful and melted or twisted it too much, then the pen would not write anymore! Vivian Honorio and cousins also had this blown glass pen barrel that we all bought from them (or made pabili!) You just took the ink tube from any regular ballpen and put it inside this glass barrel. You now had a fancy pen, that is until you whacked it too hard and the entire thing broke into many pieces! My favorite simple ball pen, even to this day, is PAPERMATE. I like the one that comes in the blue-green colored barrel. For me, my handwriting looks best when written with this simple Papermate. (Who does handwriting anymore, anyway??) Later on, this new felt pen called FLAIR came out. I still love those! In late grade school, the Japanese (of course!) came out with these pens of rainbow colors, with matching smell! My favorite “exotic” color was turquoise. They also came out with pens with erasers at the end, thus erasable ink was born (how soon after did the crooks figure out they could now erase amounts on checks and change them in their favor?) Did you have that pen with the huge barrel, maybe 1 inch in diameter, that had a gazillion colors in it? The barrel was transparent, and you could pick which color you wanted to use. The idea was novel and interesting, but impossible to write all day with that pen! And did we not check each other's work with a red ballpen? And so did the teachers, they even used FLAIR so your mistakes would be marked even more glaringly!

ERASERs: Again, could occupy a chapter in the pencil box novel! Let’s start with the “ugly” kind, if you made the mistake of buying it. There was the half white-half gray kind, can’t remember the brand. If you were left with nothing else to use but this, and you rubbed too hard, there would be a hole in your paper. My favorite erasers, once again, were made by the Japanese. Whoever managed to invent erasers with smell, and those erasers that looked like nougat, with stars or flowers embedded in the eraser body (you know what I’m talking about!) was genius. I actually saved allowance money to buy new erasers. Today, my 8 year old is as obsessed with erasers as I was (must be a genetic trait.) But the choices today are even more mind boggling than our time (I used to think of my eraser obsession as a “simple joy” of childhood.) My daughter has erasers that look like real food (think fake food displays in a Japanese sushi bar) and erasers that smell like the food they depict. While I actually used the erasers I collected, my daughter won’t let anybody near hers! I just warn her about excessive eraser sniffing (recounting the Tita Vina story where my sister sniffed too hard and required a session of tweezer extrication from her nose.)

SCHOOL BAG: In our early grades, there was an Assumption school bag. It was blue vinyl, and open on top, with transparent handles, and no wheels. The only ones with an Assumption bag on wheels were Gigi and Babita Anido who had theirs custom-wheeled! The more common school bag of our childhood was a squarish one, which had a flat sealed top. Working in a law firm some years ago, I recognized what is known as a “court bag” in legal circles, as our school bag of decades ago! Our bags came in different sizes, and different colors from black to red to green to a bright kind of blue. Because the tops were flat, many of use chose to use the bag as a seat while waiting for our rides home. Therefore, sometime towards the middle of the school year, it was not uncommon to see super lopsided bags that had seen many hours of use as chair! I can’t remember what school bags I used in high school, but it was certainly not the back pack that is now the uniform of school kids all over the world, it seems. When we were about Grade 5 or Grade 6, on top of the regular school bag, some of us brought an “Ace” bag to school. What we put in there, I can’t remember! But some of us actually stuffed notebooks in there. How? I don’t know, cause some of those Ace bags were tiny!

Our markers were called PENTEL, our water colors were called GUITAR or PRANG, the glue was good old Elmers or DUCO cement. We even played with Duco cement by spreading a thin layer on our palms, letting that dry and peeling it off, and this dried glue now looked like skin, complete with the lines of your palm. Our paste came in color plastic tubes, or a round container with a well in the middle that housed the brush. And if massive pasting was needed, then the cook just made up a big batch of gawgaw (cornstarch) that made the best paste for paper mache projects! And the best crayons then as now are CRAYOLA. We also used pastels called CRAYPAS. Bond paper: did any of you call bond paper “KOKOMBOND” like my yaya? I still don’t know how to spell it. But I’ve read somewhere that the term KOKOMBOND was actually a Tagalog contraction of the term “coupon bond.” I loved the shiny ART paper, where one side was glossy and colored, and the other side was white. There was also CONSTRUCTION paper, which was the same dull, matte color both sides, and heavier than ART paper. And for our projects, we had CARTOLINA, which was stiff but soft enough to roll. And to remove the “roll” once you were in school, you just simple rolled it the other way in, and it straightened itself out! Stiffer still was ILLUSTRATION board, which was black on one side and white on the other.

Can you forget carbon paper? I loved to play with carbon paper, even if we did not actually use in school (okay, we did, in sewing class, to make blouse patterns with, using that little wheel with teeth.) I am sure my kids will say “Huh?” if I gave them a piece of carbon paper today!

I loved going on school supply shopping trips. Everything was going to be crisp and clean and new, even if of course it meant that summer was almost over, and school days were at hand. We went to many places for supplies over the years: Unimart, Alemars, National Bookstore, Philippine Education (PECO). Many years later, my aunt discovered a store along Ongpin in Chinatown, where we would buy in bulk for me and my siblings and cousins who were now of school age too. I cannot remember the name of this store (maybe Corona, like the notebook?) but what fascinated me most was this system they had of sending money to the cashier to make change. They had rigged this pulley system throughout the store. A salesperson would ring you up from any counter (painstakingly writing down everything you bought on a receipt book), take your money and the receipt, put these inside some kind of canister, seal the canister, then send it shooting through the pulleys to the “cajera” somewhere in the middle of the store, who would now ring up the sale on the cash register, put your change and receipt back in the canister, and shoot this back to you. By the time this was done, your purchases were wrapped up nicely, and off you went. I loved those buying trips. In the States, if you go to one of the warehouse clubs like BJ’s or COSTCO, see if you find that kind of pulley system rigged up. I’ve seen it in a few stores, but they use a vacuum and air to shoot the canisters from the cash registers to the cash office!

Looking at some of the supplies my daughters use, it seems like some of them have been around forever, but I am sure we did not have them while we were in school, (maybe they were not even invented yet?) like Post-its and highlighters. I seem to remember Liquid Paper, but even before that, do you remember those white sheets that you inserted into the typewriter, so it would type in white to cover your mistake? And of course, most of our typewriters were manual or simple electric, that you could carry around with you. Once in an antique store, I saw an old fashioned typewriter, so I excitedly called my jaded children to show it to them. And back then, most of the paperwork we got in school were "mimeographed" and were not "Xerox copies."

Now my daughters have “marble composition notebook” on their supply lists. They used to come in just black and white, but now they come in various colors. Of course, I am bored with how they look, so I’ve taught the twins about cute stickers and stuff, and so the habit has been passed on to the next generation. :)

Assumption Girl at the State University

When my mom first told Miss Barrera that I was applying to U.P., Miss Barrera’s first reaction was “Baka ma-culture shock siya.” Well, I ended up in U.P. And culture shock indeed it was.

First of all, registration. Our batch had the grace to experience what the legendary U.P. registration was all about. I had a cousin, a U.P. student, who accompanied me to my first one. We had to be in line by 3 a.m. It was an adventure, you and hundreds, maybe thousands of other students lining up, hoping to get into the prime classes (read that as good professors, and decent schedules.) My cousin was so helpful and eager to be with me, but I think she really just wanted to see if her hoity toity Assumption cousin could stand up to this initiation rite of all U.P. students. I did. If I was going to be a U.P. student, then I had to behave just like all the other thousands of regular U.P. students.

Now back to broad daylight, the first days of school. My first impression: Madumi! Que horror! For years at Assumption, I took for granted clean, dust free classrooms, pristinely erased blackboards, and well-lit rooms. At U.P., I made up my own alcohol pads. Everytime I sat at a new desk, I would take out the alcohol, and clean it. Of course, my other ex-Assumption friends, now at U.P., would laugh at me. After awhile, they were borrowing my little jar. This lasted, maybe a few months. By then, almost every seat in every classroom would have been sat on by someone already, in essence, wiping the dust on their clothes. No more need for my alcohol.

The bathrooms: left much, much to be desired. How to cope? I wanted to bring a can of Lysol in my bag. BUT, my ex-Assumption friends managed to prevail upon me. Some of us were trying hard as it was, to not look too conspicuous. Cricket Concepcion’s next solution was to walk about 10 minutes away to her tita’s office, where we could use her bathroom. But of course, it wasn’t always possible to do that. So, for the next semester, all my classes were in the morning only. By noon, I was on my way home. If I could hold off going to the bathroom until I got home, then I would. And I did. It’s a minor miracle I did not get some kidney disease or something, that first year in college. Also, nowhere until U.P. did I find a "convenience store" in one corner of the banyo: a woman selling juicy fruit, halls, ballpens, blue books (U.P. exam booklets), kleenex, Kotex, at marami pang iba!

Speaking of food: There were no Assumption-like cafeterias, which we were now pining for. Instead, they had little shacks a la roadside turo-turos and carinderias. (They only got nicer years later.) So that’s where we ate, or if we were lucky, and we ran into a friend with a car, then we drove and got to eat elsewhere.

The professors: My first glimpse of this man, well, he looked like Juan de la Cruz to me, dressed in maong and t-shirt, and for heaven’s sake, chinelas! It turns out that he was one of the most brilliant calculus professors I have ever had! You see in U.P., you never know. The most ma-porma guy in class, could be really bobo, but the batang kalye dude who kinda looked greasy was brilliant. Lesson to be learned: do not judge a dude by his cowboy boots, or the state of his toenails, truly.

Class: I was a math major, so we all had the same required subjects, pre-requisites, etc. I looked around for familiar faces, knowing full well that among my circle of friends, no one was crazy as me to apply for math. Lucky for me, Gena Concepcion was just as crazy. So right away, I had a friend. We were the only two Assumption girls in our course. Ahead of us a few years was Nina Huab, Mrs. Huab’s daughter (so no surprise there.) Here’s what I did the first few days of class: When the teacher walked in the room. I stood up. Why? Because I was ready to say “Good morning, Mr. Reyes.” Pahiya ako, no? No one else stood up. No one greets teachers apparently, outside of Assumption. Another time, not only did I stand up, by sheer force of habit, I made the sign of the cross too and only when I was halfway through did I realize I was alone! Of course, no one prayed before class started in a non-sectarian school! It felt very strange the first few weeks.

So what one item did I need to purchase, which I never owned before? An umbrella! Life before UP: you got dropped off where there was an awning, and your school was covered in covered walks, that you never needed a payong. Now it was a must. Plus we learned how to take public. Cricket and I eased our way into public transportation. At first, we would only take the aircon Love Buses. After a while, not wanting to wait for them anymore, we would take non-aircon ones, but the nicer kinds. After a while, not wanting to wait even for those, we learned how to take the….dyipney! Especially since now there was a Sharon Cuneta movie every few months. We would sneak down to Ali Mall between classes, watch the movie then get back to school. So we became experts on the U.P.-Cubao dyip routes. Also, the only way to get around the HUGE Diliman campus, if you did not drive, was to take the free ikot jeeps that went around as shuttles.

In the beginning of college, we would dress nicely, fix our hair, put on a little make-up. Susan Benitez and I had this game, where we would try to make our closets go as long as possible without repeating an outfit exactly. In later years, as long as you left your house with no muta, and no bad breath, you were fine! Slowly, we were scrubbing off some of our Assumption skin.

As the years went by and we all went deep into our own majors, I saw less and less of my Assumption friends, and made more new friends. I went on to make friends with wonderful, salt of the earth, brilliant people at U.P. It was truly a different universe from the one I grew up in, but this new world also opened my eyes to what really goes on in life. I went from being a kinda big fish in a small pond, to a truly tiny fish in an ocean. If I used to think "I know a lot", well now it was "Oh my God, what else do I not know?" In many ways humbling, in many ways a great relief.

If we were such sheltered children in Assumption, U.P. laid it all bare (including the annual Christmas streakers running through the halls!) If Assumption was safe, U.P. was always teeming with cops. If Assumption was predictable, at U.P., you never knew what would happen next (bakbakan? walk-out? demonstration? rally?) If Assumption had chaste uniforms, well U.P. had... The Oblation, in all its glory! If Assumption was prayerful, U.P. was usually irreverent. My world suddenly had balance and new perspective. It was enlightening to see life from another point of view.

Soon after U.P. ended, my world would become Chicago, Illinois, then St. Louis, Missouri, then New York City: far, far away from my life at Assumption. The ocean just got larger and larger and larger.

But did Assumption prepare me for this bigger, wider, wilder world out there?

Actually, YES. Assumption taught me grace, and dignity, and generosity, and duty, and responsibility. And most of all, Assumption taught me courage and faith, enough of it to deal with whatever the big world out there would toss at me. 25 years later, gratefully, this little fish is still swimming strongly.

ASSUMPTION DAY

Happy Assumption Day, Assumption Girls!

MISS MARQUEZ HAS BEEN FOUND!!!!!!

Will post details soon. It seems she found her way to Lucena, Quezon, to the home of a former co-teacher at Assumption Antipolo.

She is safe, and seemingly well.

Text message of former Mother Martha, n.k.a. Remia Evaristo to Popsie:

"God is wonderful. Talaga Happy Assumption Day! Marina Marquez found in house of an Antipolo teacher in Lucena, Quezon. Our prayers have been heard!"

And a HAPPY ASSUMPTION DAY TO YOU ALL too!!!!!

Miss Marquez Missing Poster

MISSING PERSON

Marina “Baby” Lanuza Marquez

§ Age: 71 years old

§ Height: 5 feet (approximate)

§ Weight: 110 pounds (approximate)

§ Last seen wearing an old, double-collared, colored pink-fuchsia, Manila City Hall uniform.

§ She suffers from Alzheimer’s disease/memory lapse.

Please contact us

Mr. Rene Marquez • Ms. Elgin Manlangit

Home Address

3427 Guernica Street,

Barangay Palanan, Makati

Telephones

758-3268 • 728-1338

Cell Phones

0917 251 5351 • 0917 244 7302

0922 806 5522 • 0917 527 4329

SOUVENIRS

VELADA -- I have used this word countless times in my life, and yet don’t really know exactly what it means. Finally, looking it up online in the Spanish-English dictionary, I came up with some terms:

velada: veiled; evening reunion; soiree

From that, one can surmise that the velada was probably originally a “secret”, such that the show was to be a surprise to the audience on Old Girls Day. Maybe it was even held later in the day, like late afternoon or early evening. And indeed, most shows are kept well under wraps by Jubilarians, in order to present a delightful surprise show for the rest of the alumnae. My mother, and her mother before her have been annual attendees of Old Girls Day for decades. I suspect my lola took me along as a child but I have no memory of it, other than this picture. So I have attended just one Old Girls Day that I remember: my mother’s own Silver Jubilee in 1982, when most of us were in 2nd Year College.

Since I moved to the States 21 years ago, my mom comes to visit every year, arriving around the third week of November. This means that Old Girls Day at the end of October is still fresh in her mind. I usually get a review of the velada, especially if it was particularly spectacular or special, or if one of my various aunts was a jubilarian. Most of all, every November, I get a velada souvenir, whatever it was that was being given away or for sale at the last Old Girls Day, plus the souvenir program if it was particularly interesting or significant. Good ol’ mom, never fails to bring me something. One year, she even brought me a box of still fresh Assumption tarts plus guava jelly in a really cute Assumption lunchbox! Here are a few of the souvenirs I have gotten through the years. I wonder what our velada souvenir will be?

1000 Hits

Okay, we've sorta reached a milestone today. Or more appropriate really, a kilometer stone. Our blog's readership made 1000 hits sometime today. Not bad for a blog created just about 6 months ago, and considering we are a class of just under 300. Yes, yes, if you read multiple times, it counts it again and again, not to speak of the times I end up reading and re-reading what I wrote myself. Nevertheless, I am impressed that there are many of you out there who read this.

But, if there are that many of you out there who read this, send in a comment naman, now and then! If you think the post was awful, or galing, or whatever. I have thick skin (and it's moisturized, remember?) Better yet, send in a post yourself.

We are coming to the homestretch of velada prep. My original goal was to keep this blog going at least until October 15. That is why I "stretched" the posts over the months. I was not sure I would have enough to say to the end. I do hope to have lots of posts from the trip back home to Manila, and lots of velada pictures to publish. So hopefully, we can keep this going even after October 15, when it may become not just a Batch 1981 blog, but an Assumption blog.

There's gotta be a readership out there of non-Batch 1981 people -- I am sure of it. Go ahead and comment too! Afterall, ours is a shared Assumption experience.

So keep on reading, say something too. My hit counter says that not all of you are sleeping! (smile!)

Assumption Uniform

If there was one other thing that immediately distinguished us as Assumption girls other than our handwriting, it was our uniform. For a long time in Manila, we were the only school girls in plaid, and what a distinctive plaid it is. In my mother's day, the plaid was made of wool and was imported. During our time, it was mercifully made of cotton.

Decades before us, the Assumption girl uniform was blue with white piping, and long sleeves, sailor suit style. I can't tell you what kind of blue, because the memory in my head is a black and white photo. I believe that this is why our blouse and necktie are nautical in design too, a remnant of that earlier uniform. In my youth, you could still see the occasional Old Girl wearing her blue sailor uniform, like Mrs. Enriqueta Ver and Mrs. Casas.

There even was a white uniform, which was just like the red plaid one, but all white, including the skirt and necktie. It had to be worn to school on certain days. Its required use ended with the batch a year or two ahead of us, so we never got to use one. For graduation, we got to use the pretty gala uniform, with lace collar. Too bad we only got to use that once. In my aunt's time in the 60s, they got to use theirs throughout the school year on special occasions. Sometimes families even handed down the gala collar. I remember having to bleach our family’s, so I could have it pristine white on our graduation day. My mom just sent me the collar, it is now yellow with age and history. I will leave it like that and have it framed as is.

How did we use our uniform, let me count the ways: there were some who rolled up their sleeves, astig style. There were some who rolled up the waistband of their skirts, creating an instant mini, and there were those who wore them almost to the floor, or midi. Accessories? Lots. How about a cute Sanrio ID card holder (covered in stickers, to cover your ID picture), pinned to the regular or bubwit sized necktie. Or various cute pins like Snoopy, or a monchichi monkey hanging on for dear life on the tie, a cute wallet in one blouse pocket, and the all-important Denman brush sticking out of your skirt pocket (in grade school it was a Pro brush.) My other blouse pocket contained a hanky or Kleenex. Socks had to be white, but there was an art to folding it. There was the regular sock fold, twice or thrice over; not too high as to be nerdy, not too low to look like a "kanto girl" as my mom would put it. And there was the inverted fold, rolled in to end just under the ankles so it looked like we were wearing rolled down knee highs (mom hated that kind of sock look!) At one point, one had to have the Spanish calcetines from El Corte Ingles that looked like they were crocheted. Shoes were black, with styles ranging from Greg, to kung fu, to leather Mary Janes, and when we could get away with it (fake sugat), clogs with no socks! Buying school shoes from Greg was an adventure, but nothing like going to Shoemart and just watching that show played out by the salepeople and the person calling the shoes down from the storeroom. Do you remember that? I don't think I've seen anything like that in any shoe store in the world other than SM. Do they still do that?

We had a recompense, which we only got in our senior year. Did that go on the left lapel of the blouse, or the right? Why do I think that years before, anyone could get a recompense any time?


Our P.E. uniform was a white t-shirt with the Assumption logo in blue in front, plus blue shorts made out of some poly material, definitely not cotton. Sneakers were blue Bantex, with white socks. I thought I hated our P.E. uniform, until I got to U.P., then blue changed to maroon, yuck!


So now you have to don your uniform again on October 15. Did you have yours made yet? Did you follow Popsie’s very specific measuring instructions? Or are you so lucky you still fit into your old one? Lala de los Reyes can, but her mom said the tela is faded, so she has to have a new one made. What to wear with it? Black flats? Pumps? Manolos? Socks or stockings or sup-hose?? Do you still have your recompense? Put that on. How about your class ring? Did you give it away to someone? Hope he or she was worth it. Does it still fit? If not, wear it around your neck as a pendant. ID card holder? Maybe I can borrow my daughter’s, and put my NY State ID in it, just for old times sake, otherwise my necktie will feel bare.

How ever you wear it on Old Girls Day, wear your uniform proudly, and stand tall. You are an Assumption girl after all.