To Bataan, with Love
People nowadays get all riled up by something they chose to see on the news – totally of their own volition, nobody was forcing them to watch at all. Their angry reactions to President Duterte’s State of the Nation Address is a major and recent case in point. If they ask me what I thought, I’d tell them to lay off the news for a while because unpleasant news can bring out the worst in people, even the sweet and mild-mannered among them. Besides, all that stress can be bad for one’s health.
That’s not to say that I don’t watch or read the news at all. It’s almost impossible not to, what with television sets and people sharing stuff on Facebook. However, when news does get through to me, I always make sure that it’ll be worth my while, that it’ll be worth getting worked up over if it ever comes to that.
One such piece of news is the spate of flooding to hit the Province of Bataan just last week – which I find to be really sad. You see, I’ve lived there for just two months back in 2016, and already the place had become a second home for me.
As an engineering student, one of my requirements is to spend a summer interning for a company that deals with chemicals and large-scale manufacturing. Misamis Oriental and the rest of Mindanao has lots of options when it comes to that, and there’s always Cebu should I ever run out of prospective employers here. But during my Christmas break, I was visiting some family in Manila, whereupon my uncle suggested over dinner that I give Petron a try; he knows some people in management there. After all, he said, they have this huge petroleum refinery in Limay, Bataan, the largest and most modern in the whole country. “I’ve been there a few times, and I just know that you’ll love it there,” he told me.
And with that, all the other options were off the table - Petron Bataan Refinery it is, then.
I arrived in Bataan in the early part of summer, but my getting there came with a tiny problem. Some years back there used to be a ferry service that ran between SM Mall of Asia in Pasay City to Port Capinpin in Orion, Bataan. That was plan A. It was scorching hot in Manila at the time, but I made my way to the Mall of Asia docks anyway, only to find that there were no more ferries that ran between Manila and Bataan (I’ve been told that they’re back now). That meant I was left with plan B: I had to take the bus at the EDSA-Taft station, which would take me to Balanga City nine hours at the soonest, twelve or more if the Metro Manila traffic got really bad (which it did, more often than not).
The nice thing about taking the bus was that I get a student discount for showing the conductor my ID card. That meant that I’d have enough extra money to buy myself a big bag of Calbee potato chips to keep me company during my rides to and from Balanga.
This is gonna be longer than usual, so I’ll have to break this story into parts. Join me for part two the next time you catch me in the pages of this paper.