Waving fronds of palms, they welcomed Him to Jerusalem. Before the end of the week, they would be shouting Him crucified. But this is no sermon on short memories and universal fickle-mindedness; sermons are better left to priest and sages.

Yesterday, Christendom welcomed Holy Week with Palm Sunday. To Pangasinenses, it was Domingo Ramos or  Agew na Palaspas or simply Palaspas.

Palaspas roughly means: to cut a path through dense foliage or forest with a bolo or an instrument as sharply edged. On the other hand, palaspas also best describes: a steering of the air with a waving to-and fro of the fingers or its extensions (i.e. things that flop or swap). It was probably from this latter context that palaspas came to be associated with Palm Sunday; it was as near as near can be to refer to the palm fronds.

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Pozorrubio Central School gate as of April 12, 2011

View photos as of April 12, 2011 of the construction progress on the proposed Pozorrubio Central School building.

In two separate batches of January 23-27 and February 3-9, 2011,  representatives of national publications, broadcasting and TV networks, and other multimedia practitioners joined the Lakbay Norte Media Tour (below right) to discover or  re-familiarize themselves with the Department of Tourism (DOT) suggested list of tourist spots in Northern Philippines.

With a welcome and heartening new addition to that list: the Municipality of Pozorrubio! Thanks to the massive promotion campaign initiated by former Mayor Emma Zosima and current Mayor Artemio Chan with regards to the now-celebrated patopat of Imbalbalatong and Buneg and the medieval swords/knives of Palacpalac, Pozorrubio might yet become a regular destination for local, provincial, national and foreign tourists!

Download links below for full story and photos:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4

Saturday, January 29, 2011, Mayor Artemio Chan and guest speaker Provincial Board Member Clemente “Niño” Arboleda, Jr. tossed the ceremonial ball to declare open the Pozorrubio Inter-Barangay Basketball Tournament.  With the championship game expected to be played sometime within mid-second quarter of the year, the twenty-two (22) registered teams aim to outrun and outwit the competition, and to outnumber all shooting scores between now and then to win the Mayor’s Cup the total amount of which the donors are keeping close to their chests.

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Pozorrubians of Midwest USA medical mission

Since 2005, Anthony Mendoza has developed a habit, of earnestly and winningly convincing Pozorrubians in the US Midwest area to fund medical and dental missions to his hometown of Pozorrubio.  He gives himself and his group, the Pozorrubians Midwest USA (PMWUSA), two years to raise enough for the purchase of medicines and miscellaneous expenses of a team of doctors, dentists, nurses, pharmacists, and volunteers for the duration of the mission.

Since then, Tony had brought home four such missions, benefiting thousands of Pozorrubians with each mission. (N.B.Unfortunately, this writer was not yet part of the local scene to have documented the first two.) Tony is son of respected Pozorrubians, educators Eulogio and La Paz Mendoza.

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Wednesday, January 5, 2011, the green-and-white multi-wheeler truck  bearing the first four pre-cast columns arrived.  The columns came all the way from the casting plant at Bulacan to raise from the ground the 2nd phase of the construction of the new 3-storey building to replace the Gabaldon built in 1914 and burnt January 13, 2010, eight days and a full year ago.  The P20 million Phase 2 refers to the supply, delivery and complete installation of pre-cast structural members (columns, beams, floor stringers).

According to Municipal Engineer Joel  Desamito,  the holiday season gave pause to  Phase 2 which actually started December 5 last month following the completion of  the P6 million Phase 1. This provided for the footing foundation works which was, in turn, began August 2. Part of the finished footing can be seen in the foreground of the picture taken above with the Caballero schoolgate and the truck as background.

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On Thursday morning, November 25, 2010, in a mass oathtaking ceremony, the new sets of officers to compose the Barangay Councils of Pozorrubio (which also include the Sangguniang Kabataan) were sworn into office by the “best friend” the town ever had, former Congressman Mark O. Cojuangco, representing Congresswoman Kimi S. Cojuangco. For more of story and photos click links below

• Barangay Induction – 1

• Barangay Induction – 2

• Barangay Induction – 3

• Barangay Induction – 4

• Barangay Induction – 5

• Barangay Induction – 6

• Barangay Induction – 7

Quesada receives a plaque from IIEE-ERCSA president

The Institute of Integrated Electrical Engineers of the Philippines – Eastern Region Chapter, Saudi Arabia (IIEE-ERCSA)accorded Gin Quesada, a Pozorrubian,  a plaque of appreciation after making technical presentation at the IIEE-ERCSA’s 15th Annual Convention and Election of Officers and Technical Seminar at Tulip Inn Hotel-Alkhobar, Saudi Arabia on Nov 19, 2010. Subject of presentation focused on the latest technology on electrical substation control design (substation automation system based on the international standard IEC 61850), a hot topic in the power industry today in the whole world. 

IIEE-ERCSA is a 500-member strong (in the Eastern Region chapter only) association of Filipino electrical engineers in Saudi Arabia recognized by the Philippines’ Professional Regulations Commission (PRC). IIEE has 2 other chapters in the Kingdom, one is based in the Central Region, and the other in the Southern Region. There are other chapters of the Institute in the Middle East.

Shortly before this event, the PRC conducted a board exam here in Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. The PRC officer who officiated the exam, Atty Diosdado Anselmo Lalucis, was the guest speaker during the Institute’s Annual Convention.

IEC 61850-based Substation Automation System has been tagged by the power sector to be ultimate choice of substation control design. It combines in it the 3 major technologies of communication, IT, and electrical technologies. Quesada who has been in this 3 discliplines since 1969 has been assigned to handle SAS projects in his employer company. The length of his exposure in technology enabled him to withness various paradigm shifts in technology, like the phasing out of the vacuum tubes and entry of the silicon transistors, the merging of communications technology and IT, and now the merging of electrical, communication and IT technologies. He also withness, and more or less experienced, major developments in IT: the mainframe, the PC, the Web 1 and now the social networks or Web 2.

Quesada’s professional affiliations include membership in the following international organizations:
~ Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and 5 of its 35 societies:
>>> Power Engineering Society
>>> Professional Communications Society
>>> Communications Society
>>> Education Society -IEEE
>>> Computer Society-IEEE
~ Association of Computing Machinery (ACM)
~ Building Industry Consultancy Services International (BICSI)

IIEE-ERCSA’s choice of Quesada being the technical resoure person was based from his variety of technological exposure over a long period as described above.

Quesada previously made two technical presentations for the Institute in the 90′s. One was a whole day presentation covering all forms of communications used in the power network. The second presentation was about the website he designed for the Institute when websites was still in its infancy of development.

Quoting from one of the slides, the abstract of Quesada’s presentation in this event goes:

“The presentation is about substation automation system (SAS) based on the IEC Standard 61850. It discusses the history of substation automation; explains the need for the technology, the problem the industry continue to face and solution proposed by SAS. The presentation provides an introductory discussion of the structure of IEC 61850 standard. Data model and Substation Configuration Language (SCL) approach to engineer a substation is explained. Technical benefits like inter-operability, fast communication between IEDs, reliability, fast restore times of faulted substations, redundancy schemes, cyber-security, use of Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) are discussed. Other standards used in substations that are closely related to IEC 61680 are also mentioned, like communication to the Control Center and inter-Control Center linking”.

A video streaming version of his presentation will be available from his sites in the second week of December, 2010.

A PDF version of his Powerpoint presentation may be downloaded by clicking on the link below (file size is 10MB):

• Substation Automation System-Introduction to IEC 61850 by Gin Quesada

His presentation slides are also available in his websites as indicated below:
Main website: http://www.ginquesada.com >> Download presentation here
LinkedIn site: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ginoquesada  >>  Download here (you must log-in to your LinkedIn account to view this)
Facebook site: http://www.facebook.com/ginquesada >> Download here (you must be logged-in to your Facebook account)
UTube channel: http://www.utube.com/user/ginquesada  (not available yet, presentation is being converted to video file with audio)
Family biz site: http://www.quesadatech.com >> Download here
Twitter site: http://www.twitter.com/ginquesada >> Download here (you must be logged-in to your Twitter account)
Town website: http://www.pozorrubio.ph >> Download here

The IIEE-ERCSA, interested to tap his insights and wisdom on recent developments, has proposed informally that he conducts in behalf of the organization paid monthly lectures/presentations on the subject (substation automation system), communication, and IT technologies. The series is proposed to start on January, 2011 with the new set of officers.

Earlier, he has been scheduled to make a presentation at another professional organization, the Institute of Electronics Engineers of the Philippines – Saudi Arabia Chapter (IECEP) on web development using vendor-specific and open systems.

Quesada is also the designer and webmaster of Pozorrubio Online(www.pozorrubio.ph), IECEP, PSME-SA (Philippine Society of Mechanical Engineers -Saudi Arabia Chapter, www.psme-sa.com) and many other websites.

Clickhere to open revised schedule of Pozorrubio Town Fiesta.