By LIWAY C. MANANTAN-YPARRAGUIRRE

WAKE up early, say between 5 a.m.-6 a.m., go outside and you will be gently kissed by, surprise, surprise, the fog. Yes, fog, as though you are in Baguio City. Yet, here I am in Dagupan City, in the lowlands, so to speak, and still being greeted by the morning mist. .
With the cold mornings (It’s still hot in the evening in this part of the city where we live), I can’t help but reminisce my college days in Baguio.

I lived in a typical house in Baguio for below middle class families. Its roof was of G.I. sheets, the four corner walls were of flat G.I sheets with a thin plywood as double-walling.
So you can just imagine how freezing it would be when the temperature really drops starting late in the afternoon ‘til morning from October to February.
(Unfortunately, however, what you see during daytime is smog or dark smoke from vehicles.)
*****
After several months, I went back to Baguio last Tuesday to pay my last respects to fellow journalist Allan Fernando R. Maligpas, my publisher and editor in the North Luzon Gazette.
A community newspaper, this ‘baby’ of Allan M. (a product of his sweat and blood) metamorphosed from a weekly paper circulating in Regions 1, 2 and the Cordillera, to an online daily paper to what is now today, a weekly national broadsheet called Philippine Gazette.
Unfortunately, he did now see their fifth edition or issue. He died last Saturday. Thirty six year old Allan left behind his wife Yvonne and their four kids, and his ‘baby,’ the Philippine Gazette.
From Manila where he was based for a time, his remains was brought back to Baguio last Tuesday. He was laid to his final resting place this Sunday. Adios gayyem, my friend.
*****
My brother-in-law had his lump below the ear checked at a government hospital in Pangasinan. The doctor scheduled the minor operation. He was given a riseta, told to go back to the hospital on a certain date with the items he was to buy (it was not a medicine my sister learned). It was to be used during the operation.
Alas, the item(s) is not available in the different drugstores all over town other than at a single drugstore.
The attendants/salespersons at the drugstores where my sister showed the doctor’s prescription only replied with a smile and it is available only at that certain drugstore.
My sister’s problem was the drugstore allegedly does not want to issue official receipt. But how can they make a refund at PhilHealth without the OR. Could it be that the items prescribed to be bought at that certain drugstore are actually being sold by the doctor?
To cut the story short, my sister and her husband decided instead to go to Baguio General Hospital for a check-up.
My sister said the personnel and doctors there were very courteous and systematic in attending to the patients despite their number. The operation will be done after the abscess is gone, so he was told.
*****
Not long ago, a relative from Cabilaoan, Laoac who had a myoma was brought to the same government hospital early in the evening. She could hardly breathe and she complained of some pain.
Since she was to be confined, their companions and the tricycle they rode from Laoac went back home. Her mother stayed with her.
But lo and behold, they were allegedly “forced” to check out after the dextrose given her was consumed. What an inhuman treatment!
My mother who visited them that evening found the poor patient and her mother outside the hospital building at a loss on what to do or where to go. My mother took pity on them and brought them over to sleep at our home.
The following morning, the patient was brought to Baguio General Hospital where she was given A-1 medical attention and she soon recovered. Now I know why many of our villagemates in Cabilaoan (Laoac) and Sta. Ines (Manaoag), and those from other places, prefer to go to BGH.