Imelda called up at about 7:00 AM from San Francisco (50% [sic] Fahrenheit and spring weather, she says) where she is waiting for some repairs of their plane, on their way back to Manila. They arrive Monday at 6:30 PM.
Went on a Sentimental Journey.
Left by the just arrived Fokker (259) (from an [1-km.?] at Amsterdam) for Ilocos Norte with Imee where we met the Kabataan Barangay on their projects. Went direct to Sarrat where we visited the Marcos Museum which I must improve, the old church where we had a Te Deum, my old primary school, the Sarrat Elementary School which has since been improved and now looks like the thick walled Spanish fortress type of building which it was during my days of schooling there, the Cadaklan River, even now disappointingly narrow and shallow after all my stories of wild churning waters charging through the channel (and of course almost drowning in the river or stream beside the house in Batac), then to the Kabataan project, a pelota court.
By Love bus (Metro Transit of course!) all the way with a running commentary by me over the bus loudspeaker system—straight to Batac to open the fiesta, the Agoo Industrial Fair where Imee cut the ribbon and we picked up some mangoes, chicos, bagoong for good measure and some other local articles pressed on us proudly by relatives and friends; a basketball game by the KB’s in the municipal building to which is appended the athletic hall and auditorium; to the White House for a drink; then lunch at the Coral Beach Resort of Mayor [Cirilo] Quilala of Currimao where we refused to eat indoors but moved to the beach under the coconut trees; to Pasay at 1:30 PM where we gawked at the Indonesian or Buddhist looking massive church set up in 1593 and started actually in 1706; then finally to Suba at Paoay Lake, the enchanted lake of the Sodom-Gomorrah type of legend, swallowed up by water for some human failing and deficiency or other (in our younger days we were fascinated by the claim that if one dived deep enough one would see the church spires under water and meet up with fish with golden earrings, antique no doubt, so much so we almost punctured our adolescent ear drums to locate this lost city).
Here I have built a bamboo house with three air-conditioned bedrooms and am rebuilding an old massive Ilocos or Vigan house above on a hill.
But what excites me is my project to turn the dry and sterile area around the lake into a pilot area for the upgrading of dry and uneconomic farm lands as well as make the lake productive with fish pens similar to the fish pens of Laguna de Bay. A cooperative will be established for the residents, Duck Raising, Cattle Fattening, orchards of mangoes, citrus, grapes, etc.
No Official Gazette entry for this day.
This will be a model.
And I will put one also in Burgos in the northern part of Ilocos Norte.