THE TALKING TRAIN
By: Iris P. Concepcion


Chugged on my wheels, people line up like lilliputan fireflies, hurrying up, looking for my compartments.


I am a train and I have a mouth for speaking.


The catalyst of my mechanical self, a running machine that had swept vistas both excitable and horrid, all onto the glory of human tales. Nature has its own version of prettiness: its misshaped highways, eclectic trees, windswept horizons, Cohen-adaptable in its search of that one, unique orchid. 


I seek pleasure from the gamut of faces hopping in one of my coaches, straining their faces on my windows, perplexed and worn out, rejuvenated later by a sprightly pond with white stalks swaying.


I had seen men with shining shoes, brightly scrubbed like tin roofs, gazing from afar in my wooden sill. Men who had woven stories of football games. Women who had created Quidditch matches out of broomstick apparitions. Women who had prayed to God of Small and Big things. Women who had converted calories in apportioning food through a systematized form of food science.


I saw them all: chasing their Booker trophies in imagined Welsh accent, clothed in Indira Gandhi's garb, wide-eyed in their own painted world of printed visuals.


I have never seen kites flown on the ground lately. I saw hooded Arab women who had democratized their societies in fashionable outfits, Monroish in taste, keeping their Acer laptops at bay-knee while buying Chinese siopao from healthy Thai vendors.


I have seen fat, thin, blind, clear-eyed, uniformed, jolly, sad, loquacious, lost, found, happy, melancholic, young, old, sleeping, awake, cadaverous, obese human assortments neatly packed like a can of Graham crackers divided by Reynold's foil wrap.


The platform to writing eternity is me.


I am the train and the train is me.


(Note to corn: Looks good as first page of a novel. May be improved though.)




Now, for the truest meaning of education reform. From President Aquino's blogsite. This is well-written. A journalistic haven.

More Filipino Indigenous and Muslim school children will now benefit from better access to a quality education through a new partnership between Australia and the Philippines.

Australian Ambassador to the Philippines Rod Smith and Department of Education (DepEd) Secretary Brother Armin Luistro today launched the Philippines’ Response to Indigenous Peoples and Muslim Education (PRIME) Program; a DepEd initiative to help address the learning needs of indigenous and Muslim school children.

“As a response to our commitment to make education universal and inclusive, DepEd has been extending efforts to cross the boundaries on culture, tradition and religion. While this PRIME project is a big boost to the Education For All goal of the department, it is, more importantly, the government’s way of responding to the needs of Indigenous Peoples and Muslim communities for relevant and responsive basic education, one that removes barriers to meaningful participation in society and empowers learners to exercise their rights and duties as Filipino citizens,” Secretary Luistro expressed.

“Australia is pleased to be a founding partner of PRIME, providing Php880 million (A$20 million) from 2011 to 2014. We applaud the Philippine Government’s efforts to address the particular needs of indigenous and Muslim learners – many of whom are among some of the most disadvantaged of Filipino children in terms of their access to a quality basic education,” Ambassador Smith said.
Through PRIME, Australia will assist DepEd develop learning materials, train teachers and adapt the curriculum to make teaching and learning culturally sensitive and relevant to indigenous and Muslim school children.

“PRIME further strengthens our large and long-standing partnership with the Philippines in the education sector. Over half of Australia’s aid budget to the Philippines goes to education, and we are ready to support the DepED as it scales up support for Muslim and indigenous students,” Ambassador Smith said.

“In behalf of the education department and the entire Philippine government, we thank the Australian government for helping us reach another milestone in the Philippine public education system as we encourage maximum participation of all learners despite religious affiliation, ethnic group or disability. Empowerment and reduction of vulnerabilities for the said groups will be a very important component of PRIME in ensuring that the education needs of this sector are met by curriculum and pedagogical enhancements,” Secretary Luistro responded.

Luistro furthered that the very idea of inclusive education that PRIME offers will lessen justifications for non-attendance specially because schools can now provide for the learning needs of indigenous and Muslim learners, identified as belonging to groups that are either unserved or underserved in the Philippines basic education sector.

Since 2002, Australian assistance has helped increase access to and quality of education for some six million children in the Visayas and Mindanao. Australia works with DepEd to strengthen education policies and systems, train teachers, and introduce new learning and teaching strategies. Australian projects have provided Filipino children with over 200 community learning centres, access to alternative learning programs, and an improved curriculum - including for indigenous and Muslim students and remote and disadvantaged communities.

And another news item:

Transparent Government

DPWH undertakes transport infrastructure development in Central Mindanao

2011-07-05

About 96 percent of the concreting works for the more than 36 kilometers Maguindanao/Sultan Kudarat Boundary-Lebak-Kalamansig Road in Central Mindanao has been completed.Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) Secretary Rogelio L. Singson said that this major development on the transport infrastructure in the provinces of Maguindanao and Sultan Kudarat reduces travel from two (2) hours to about one (1) hour.
The project involves the portland concrete cement paving of highway 6.70 meter wide and construction of two (2) reinforced concrete deck girder bridges and one (1) pre-stressed concrete deck girder bridge with a total length of 41.26 lineal meters.
DPWH Undersecretary Rafael C. Yabut, Project Implementation Officer for Official Development Assistance-funded projects, said that financing for this project costing P764.658 Million was funded through a loan agreement between the Philippine Government and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).
Also financed by JICA is the on-going rehabilitation and reconstruction of the 37 kilometer North Upi-Maguindanao/Sultan Kudarat Boundary Road which is 62 percent completed.
Costing P892.399 Million, the project involves concrete paving of existing 27.7 kilometer gravel road and rehabilitation of about 4.6 kilometer concrete road while about 5.9 kilometer portion has been exempted from the rehabilitation works due to good road condition.
Assistant Secretary for Project Management Office Emil K. Sadain said that these two (2) on-going projects under the implementation of the DPWH Rural Roads Network Development Project-Project Management Office (DPWH-RRNDP-PMO) form part of the 105 kilometer Awang-Upi-Lebak-Kalamansig Road or Central Mindanao Road Project.
Earlier, the improvement of the 30.18 kilometer Jct. Awang-North Upi Road from the junction of Cotabato-Koronadal Road was completed in the amount of P566 Million under financing of the national government (Government of the Philippines) and with DPWH Region 12 implementing the project.
Secretary Singson said that aside from reduced transportation cost, enhanced social service delivery and job creation, the development of Central Mindanao Roads will give boost to the President Benigno S. Aquino III administration’s program for peace and development.