For our Straight from the Sky Special Presentation this week, we bring you the 3rd part of our Holy Land Pilgrimage Travel Series with Delmar Travel & Tours. This time we are in the Region of Galilee where we go to see the house of St. Peter in Capernaum, which was the headquarters of our Lord Jesus Christ who was from Nazareth. On top that the ruins of St. Peter’s house is a chapel that was constructed partly with the help of Don Ramon Durano. So we, Fr. Gerry Matriano and Fr. Dante Barcelona, held a Mass for us in that chapel.
Then we went off to Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves, the spot where our Lord Jesus Christ gave a prefiguration of the Holy Communion, where 5,000 were fed from a few loaves of bread and five fishes. There is now a church in that very spot where our Lord did that miracle. Then after lunch of Holy Fish (actually it is tilapia) we proceeded to take a boat ride in the Sea of Galilee. Our tour guide Exie “Romema†Schlossberg got a boat owned by Messianic Jews who accepted that our Lord Jesus Christ is the Messiah.
From the view on the boat, Exie told us that you cant see a 10-mile stretch where 80 percent of the preaching and teaching and the miracles of our Lord Jesus Christ happened in that very small area. Yet his word has been heard and accepted worldwide and today there’s a billion Catholics and millions more from other Christian Churches.
We had fun singing Christian songs on the boat and after an hour we returned to see an ancient boat that was recovered in the shores of Galilee. So watch this very interesting travelogue to the Holy Land in SkyCable’s Channel 61 at 8 p.m. with replays on MyTV Channel 30 at 9 p.m. and M-W-F.
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Because of a prior commitment and plane tickets already paid for, I went to Manila last Friday morning to attend the 13th Grand Wine Experience at the Resort World Marriott. But as we got into the PAL ticket counter, we learned that our 11 a.m. flight schedule was for 11 p.m. What a bummer! Our travel agent made a humongous mistake. To our horror, all planes were full on that day so we couldn’t rebook our tickets for the day.
So we went to the Business Class counter to purchase Business Class tickets. To my sheer amazement, the lady on the counter, Ms. Laura Palabrica, smiled and accepted our ticket and issued us a boarding card for the previous flight, which was delayed. We asked if we needed to pay additional charges, but she there was none. Twenty minutes later we boarded the plane. The attitude of the lady in the counter is an attitude of a person who is service-oriented. If this is the way the new PAL is being operated, then I’m positive that PAL will always be carrying the Philippine flag to foreign countries.
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Over the weekend, I read in The Philippine Star that one of the biggest bottlenecks to bringing relief goods to the typhoon devastated areas was in Matnog, Sorsogon. Few people have been in that place. But many big bikers always pass there when they cross the San Bernardino Strait from Allen, Samar, to Matnog, Sorsogon, which is at the southernmost tip of the island of Luzon. So you ask, why is there a bottleneck there?
From what I can recall since the last time I travelled there, Matnog only has two Roll-On, Roll-off (Ro-Ro) vessels that ply this route. That means there are not enough Ro-Ro vessels to service that route when there are literally hundreds of huge trucks bringing relief supplies to Samar and Leyte. It only gives you an idea that no matter how quickly the packing centers prepare the relief goods packed by thousands of volunteers, all that production grounds to a halt in that chokepoint called Matnog, Sorsogon.
Once again this situation exposes the incompetence of the Aquino Regime which should have thought of this scenario if only the National Disaster Risk Reduction Management Council brainstormed their worst-case scenarios. This is one major chokepoint, which was report to no less than Pres. Benigno “PNoy†Aquino III who during a presscon told the press that those chokepoints were already decongested. Again, we have a president who was handed a note and he spews it out to the media without verifying the note and in the end…he is caught lying through his teeth!
To decongest Matnog, the NDRRMC should have “commandeered†Ro-Ro vessels from placed like Batangas, which travels to Mindoro. Just three such Ro-Ro vessels would have easily decongested that route. But then again, we know that the snag is caused by bureaucracy in the Maritime Industry Authority, which handles the franchises of commercial ships. But then, we are in an emergency situation and bringing those Ro-Ro vessels as fast as they can is the only solution to this chokepoint. So will they do it?
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Email: vsbobita@gmail.com.