Zamboanga's First Christian - Muslim Peace Library Rising

Dear Friends,

Assalamu Alaykum (Peace Be With You)!

As you can see in the picture, the library you inspired us to build is now in full construction swing. It is projected to be half-completed by the end of this month, just in time for the scheduled April 6 soft opening.

By then, it would be an unpainted, incomplete, largely bare yet a proud building and a repository of the dreams and hopes of our poor Christians and Muslims brethren down South.

In this regard, we are inviting you to join us for the soft opening ceremony in Manicahan, a barrio 24 kilometers East of Zamboanga City. Please confirm your intention to join us for the blessing of the Kristiyano-Islam (Kris) Peace Library. This blessing will be officiated by a local priest and a Muslim Imam.

Other activities include a computer lecture and the testing out of the computers by children who will probably do so for the first time in their lives—just imagine the surge of emotions as we see their faces light when they this thing called computer for the first time in their lives!

There will also be a book-reading session with Abu Sayyaf kids and the giving of books, toys and slightly used school supplies to children who will be visiting the library for the first time. In this regard, we hope you could help us source out those toys or other stuff that you think will help entice the children to visit the library regularly this summer.

We are trying to arrange for a press conference but this early we doubt if this is possible given the fact that many reporters would then be out for their Holy Week vacation.

Due to limited resources, we can only provide you with transport to and from the airport and accommodation in our humble ancestral home in Manicahan, which is relatively peaceful. We’ll also accompany you to ensure your safety should you want to stay in the city longer.

We hope you understand our limited resources, given the fact that even if half completed, the library would already cost about P350,000. As of today, donors–mostly friends and clients of our public relations and litigation PR firm—have only given us a total of P158,000. Well, you can easily guess where the rest of the construction cost is coming from.

We now realize that it may have been foolhardy for us to rush into building a library so fast without first putting up a formal foundation or getting donors to produce the money first. But we have no regrets, we’ll just have to bite the bullet and count on God/Allah to bless our businesses so we can see through the completion of the library.

Anyway, as many of you have probably experienced already, giving is not really giving until it hurts. We are just beginning to experience this now but it’s all worth it. But should you not be able to join us in the soft opening, there is still time for you all to catch up in July when we shall have formally completed the library.

By then, we plan to hold a medical and dental mission, display and sale of unique Muslim arts and craft done by the kids and their parents; and other activities to help bring smiles into the faces of war-torn children in Zamboanga City.

Regards and God Bless.

Armand and Annora Nocum
A-Book-Saya Group

THE DAY ASHIA PLAYED AS A CHILD AGAIN

By Armand Dean Nocum
Jungolf Parent

“I wish I was born as poor as them … at least I could play all day.’’
This innocent remark from my eight-year-old daughter just floored me a day before Christmas when I was driving her home from practice at a nearby golf driving range in Quezon City.
We had then spotted several children knocking at car windows asking for food. Seeing them, I told Ashia Marie just how lucky she was to have food to eat, a good school; and a family that could provide for her needs.
Ashia, who had been regularly training for golf competitions since age five, told me that she longs to play with children of informal settlers who live near our house in Don Antonio Heights, Quezon City.
At first, I scolded her for not knowing how to be contented and thankful to God for her small blessings. But later at home, it dawned on me that my little girl is slowly losing her childhood for the dream of bringing honor to the country by winning in junior golf tournaments abroad.
After showing interest in golf at age two, Ashia had spent most of her childhood in driving ranges and fairways than malls or playgrounds. Her life since then had revolved mostly around school, tutorials and golf.
Unlike other children who can rest after school, Ashia is driven straight to the golf course to practice before returning home to study. This happens about three times a week. Other junior golfers do this daily.
On weekends, she is carried off to the car still asleep as early as 4-5 AM so she could make it to golf tournaments out of Metro Manila. And after the awarding ceremonies and braving the SLEX or NLEX traffic, she arrives home about 6 PM. Her weekends see her leaving house before daybreak and returning when the sun has set.
Mostly, she does not mind this kind of schedule because she enjoys the game she fell in love with long before she learned how to talk. She was calling it “dolf” at two years old. She was born cute and with light complexion, but constant exposure to the sun had turned her dark.
So far, golf enabled her at six to qualify and proudly bring the country’s flag in the 2007 Callaway Junior World Golf Championship in San Diego, California. Although caddy errors and numerous penalty strokes caused her to slide to No. 5 at the end of the tournament, Ashia still made the country proud by making a hole-in-one in the prestigious golf tournament.
I cannot get mad enough or fire the caddy because the nervous and error-prone caddy was me.
In spite of me and in the hands of local caddies, Ashia rebounded by making two more holes-in-one in a span of two weeks in two tournaments here. For making three holes in one by age seven and in a span of 10 months, friends now call her the “Muslim Ace” (her mother Annora is a Tausug).
This Christmas and with more time out of school, Ashia can’t help but miss the children she used to play with before she got serious in golf.
So, on Christmas Day and after she helped distribute bags of food, toys and grocery items to kids coming from informal homes, we allowed Ashia to spend the whole afternoon playing with them. I promised to allow her to play with them some more in the succeeding holidays.
But after resuming her golf practice and playing in tournaments after Christmas, Ashia has yet to play with her old friends whose carefree lives she envies.

SATTI RUSH

This blog is not for the faint of heart. This blog is not for the conformist. This blog is not for the un-adventurous. This blog is for the lover of life, adventure, fun, changes, and the seeker of truth and of course – SATTI!

I've chosen ``Sattisfaction’’ as the title of my blog because to me Satti defines how life should be lived, that is living with the intensity of a hot, steaming Satti soup taken at dawn from a long night of devil-may-care drinking.

Well, at least that was how I lived back then in Zamboanga City where we painted the night fantastic at the La Terraza Disco Bar and creep back home sober and alive, having exorcized the alcohol and all kinds of similar spirits with a nice gulf of Satti -- that was how me and my brothers discovered Satti in this little known restaurant near Plaza Pershing.

Being a non-Muslim, Satti is an acquired taste for me. But when I had an initial sip of it, I never stopped longing for its rich spicy taste that like life represents something that is sweet, attractive but at the same time hard to gulf down in one go. It’s like the desire to do something prohibitive – the more you are warned against doing it, the bigger the temptation and desire to do it. Satti, you see, is not for the faint of heart and I too had to have several returns to that restaurant to marshal my taste buds into braving up for Satti’s spicy rush!

Well, I don't live that life of debauchery anymore, with my high-profile career, kids and age having tamed me through the years. However, some things in your past remains with you no matter what stature you reach in your life and one of them is satti. It is for this reason that me and my Tausug wife Ann decided to put up a satti outlet in SM-Fairview.

For the uninitiated, the Satti soup is made up primarily of peanut and spicy and ``everything nice.’’ Actually, its formula is a well guarded secret and successfully kept hidden from the world by a Chinese-Muslim family from Sulu who in turn got it from an Arab who came to the area.

I tried to get this formula but my initial efforts failed so I decided to pirate one of their cooks and so now for the first time in Metro Manila, the secret is out – well, at least the taste, but the not the formula hehe!

What make the Satti experience unique is that it is eaten with rice cooked in coconut leaves known as ``pusò’’ which in turn is dipped in the soup, verily, Satti is the only food you eat where you dunk the rice in the soup – Oreo style. Satti can be eaten with grilled beef or chicken.

Satti is believed to have been brought to Asia by Arabs and it is known as Satay and Sate in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore where it is a favorite food offered in hotels, first class seats in their national airlines and more so in the streets.

So, you see, Satti’s history is as rich and thick as its spicy soup. So this is precisely how my blog would be like – it is a celebration of the spice of life. In this blog, you will read commentaries on the inside stories of the news stories breaking out here and all over the world, among others.

With my long experience as a former senior investigative reporter of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, I will try to give you an inside track on WHAT IS THE REAL SCORE” behind the news stories that are often muddled by PR spins, government and other institutional cover-ups; and exacerbated by the further dissolution of the truth by some newspapers owners, editors and writers who have an agenda of their own.

So this is my blog, it is hot, in-your-face telling of what to me is the truth. In Chavacano (bastardized Spanish), we say pica este noy (This is hot, my friend)!.

Gracias y hasta luego (until later).