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Growing up in the Philippines, we didn’t really “celebrate” Halloween.* Yes, come October, establishments would be decked with Halloween decorations but kids didn’t go Trick-or-Treating (door-to-door roaming of the neighborhood was done during Christmas instead – in the form of caroling). That, however, didn’t stop us from dressing up in costumes and it wasn’t just limited to Halloween time either. Kids had many chances to don their Superman or ballerina costumes. Many celebrated their birthdays by throwing costume parties. Sometimes, we dressed up whenever it struck our fancy (an explanation for the current popularity of cosplay in the Philippines, perhaps?). The following are some pictures from my childhood attesting to this.

My sisters and I in masks

Tropical wild west

 
My brother and I as Batman and Robin (left) and as astronauts (right)

Today, we still don’t celebrate Halloween. At our church, we have something called a “Harvest” festival where kids come in costumes but special emphasis is placed on God’s blessings during harvest time. The family and I just came back from such an event this evening.

*The Philippines, being a Catholic country, celebrates instead All Soul’s Day/All Saint’s Day, a day to commemorate the “faithful departed.”

Today’s featured article on Wikipedia is the History of the Philippines.

On this day, October 20, sixty-two years ago, General Douglas MacArthur returned to the Philippines as promised. In 1955 on this day, The Return of the King was first published. The Monterey Bay Aquarium first opened its doors on this day in 1984. The Oakland Hills firestorm also happened on this day in 1991. This day also happens to be my birthday.

I waited for my link to the History of the Philippines to appear as a post using del.icio.us’s built-in daily blog tool but it failed for some reason. I just have to post links like this manually, I suppose.

Last Saturday was Sesquicentennial Day at my high school alma mater, Lowell High School in San Francisco. Yup, that’s one hundred fifty big years, making it the oldest public high school west of the Mississippi.

I got the invitation to the event from the Alumni Association but I couldn’t make it. It was the 3-year death anniversary of my wife’s mother and we had a little get-together. It would’ve been nice to have gone though. One of my old friends said in an e-mail that it would be neat to show our kids where we went to high school.

Three years ago I lamented that Lowell didn’t make it to Newsweek’s 100 Best High Schools in America list. Well, this year it made #26. When I went there many years ago, I believe it ranked #7 (not on account of me, btw!).

Lowell is a magnet school that has produced three Nobel Prize winners (more than most countries), several captains of industry and many other alumni of note. Among them are:

• William Hewlett - yes, of Hewlett-Packard
• Carol Channing - of which our auditorium was named after
• Charles Ginsberg - “The Father of the VCR”
• Donald Fisher - founder of GAP
• Dian Fossey - she who paid the ultimate price protecting the gorillas in the mist
• Bill Bixby - yup, Dr. Banner himself
• Naomi Wolf - feminist writer
• Benjamin Bratt - one-time apple of Ms. Julia Roberts’ eye
• Daniel Handler - Lemony Snicket’s alter ego (previously blogged about here)

Even Lowell’s misfits manage to make a name for themselves. Margaret Cho is a Lowell drop-out. Adrian Lamo, a world-famous hacker, is a Lowell graduate.

Perhaps out of all the famous Lowellites, Rube Goldberg would be my favorite. (Notice how in the Lemony Snicket movie, a Rube-Goldberg contraption was featured in the opening scene?)

There are other notable alumni that didn’t get into the online lists. Here are a few of them:

• Paris - the Black Panther of Hip-Hop
• Emil Guillermo - Fil-Am columnist and former “All Things Considered” host at NPR
• Tess Uriza Holthe - Filipina author of When the Elephants Dance
• Carlos Villa - Filipino artist and educator
• Orvy Jundis - Philippine Comics historian, writer and martial arts instructor
• *just added* Alex Tse - screenwriter of the Spike Lee-directed Showtime movie Sucker Free City

Oh and how could I forget: the actress who played Teek in the 1985 Star Wars spin-off Ewoks: The Battle for Endor was in my class.

With an impressive roster of alumni like that, you’d see why I hadn’t gone to any of our reunions. What’s my claim to fame?