July 2012
U.P. Newsletter 13
NCTS conducts training course on road safety audit Engr. Sheila Flor D. Javier and Mary Kristen C. Clamor
a special session on International Road Assessment Programme (iRAP). The course was first offered from September 13 to 17, 2010 at the Toyota Training Room. It was attended by 20 participants – 11 from the Manila North Tollways Corporation (MNTC) and nine from the Tollways Management Corporation (TMC). The second was conducted from August 22 to 26, 2011, involving participants from various local government units (LGUs) and private institutions with
the hope of promoting safety in their locality. Attendees were from Skyway Operations Maintenance Corporation, Municipal Planning and Development Office (MPDO) and Public Transport Management Office of General Trias City, Traffic Engineering Center of MMDA, Tagiug City’s Traffic Management Office, South Asia Transport and Communication of Asian Development Bank (ADB), Philippine Skylander’s Inc./Public Estates Authority Tollway Corporation (PEATC), South Luzon Expressway (SLEX)
and Manila Toll Expressway Systems (MATES). The third was conducted from April 16 to 22, 2012 at the Toll Regulatory Board (TRB) in Ortigas, Pasig, attended by 25 TRB personnel. They had two road safety audits of existing roads: one in a portion of Southern Tagalog Arterial Road (STAR) Tollway and the other in one portion of the Manila-Cavite Expressway (Coastal Road). The course is ideally offered by the NCTS twice a year.
Jose Maceda Project Series launched Arlyn VCD Palisoc Romualdo
“Without the brain that [Jose] Maceda— as a teacher and scholar—stands for, [the] UP College of Music is not worth a grain of salt,” Dean Jose Beunconsejo declared during the launch of the Jose Maceda Project Series last June 27, in line with the 15th anniversary of the Center for Ethnomusicology (UPCE). The Center was the brainchild of Maceda, who was named National Artist for Music in 1997. Titled “Strata: Spheres of Enlightenment,” the launch was also the first installment in the project series that aims to “promote the legacy of Maceda in new music composition and ethnomusicology” through various activities in the next five years. According to Prof. Verne de la Peña, member of the UPCE advisory board, these activities will include performances of Maceda’s compositions; exhibits of his photographs, notes, scores, and other memorabilia that document his creative process and field research; symposia and publications. The event featured two paper presenters, University Professor Emeritus and UPCE Executive Director Ramon P. Santos and UPCE Fellow Neal Matherne. Two of Maceda’s compositions, “Music for Two Pianos and Four Percussion Groups” and “Music for Two Pianos and Four Winds” were also performed with Prof. Josefino Toledo as conductor. Santos discussed “The Legacy of Jose Maceda to the Musics of Asia,” in which he states that Maceda’s compositions “can only be accurately identified as anything but western in its conceptual orientation as well as sonic manifestation” even as western music “catalyz[ed] his transformation as musician and thinker.” Furthermore, he said that Maceda’s legacy is the search for “alternative directions in modern musical expressions.”
Photo by Bong Arboleda
The National Center for Transportation Studies (NCTS) of UP Diliman held the Road Safety Workshop for Provincial Road Management Facilities (PRMF) Partner Provinces from June 4 to 8 at the Cocoon Boutique Hotel in Quezon City. Participants in the Road Safety Workshop were provincial planning officers, provincial engineers, and provincial administrators. There were also participants from the Depar tment of Interior and Local Government (DILG) and Facility Managing Contractor (FMC). The participants came from the provinces of Agusan del Sur, Bohol, Bukidnon, Guimaras, Misamis Occidental, Misamis Oriental, Surigao del Norte, Aklan, Davao del Norte and Lanao del Norte. The main purpose of the workshop was to orient the partner provinces on the principles and rationale of road safety, as well as to enable the partner provinces to work out strategies on mainstreaming road safety in their road management systems. Consistent with this, the workshop also aimed to guide each province to formulate a national road safety action plan. The participants completed four presentations: on their respective road safety issues, an action plan (RSAP) draft, audit findings and recommendations, and re-entry action plan (REAP). For field work they audited the provincial roads of Montalban, Rizal. Guest speakers were Director Melvin Navarro of the Planning Service of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH); Engr. Renato Reyes and Cesar Fadri also from DPWH; Engr. Emilio Llavor from the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA); Assistant Secretary Dante Lantin from the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC); Dr. Noriel Christopher Tiglao from UP National College of Public Administration and Governance (NCPAG); Engr. Steve Cases Jr., former deputy director of NCTS; Dr. Jose Regin Regidor from UP Institute of Civil Engineering (ICE); Dr. Hilario Sean Palmiano from ICE; Engr. Aileen Mappala, head of TEM/TP of NCTS; Dr. Ricardo Sigua from ICE; and Jun Bataoel from PRMF. As of June 2012, the Center had conducted three training courses on Road Safety Audit (RSA). The modules of the training course are fundamentals of RSA, road safety facilities, geometric design of highways and intersections, RSA guidelines and procedures, RSA application on existing or operational road, accident analysis, and
Santos discusses the legacy of Maceda to the musics of Asia.
While he employed western musical instruments, Maceda’s compositions deconstr ucted the “linear musical structures” these instruments are used for. “Distemperament,” for example, separates the “orchestral force… from the “symphony orchestra’s ideal temperament [of] harmonic coherence, acoustical balance, [and] contrasts and complementation by the various instrumental timbres and instrumental groupings.” Matherne, a PhD candidate at the University of California Riverside, presented “Maceda: Ethnomusicologist as Composer, Composer as Ethnomusicologist.” Matherne describes Maceda’s career as a composer “as a free play of native signifiers that does not necessarily exclude western frameworks but instead uses them to test the possibilities of a different approach to music from an Asian perspective, a Southeast Asian perspective or a Filipino perspective.”
As an ethnomusicologist, he “addressed the need to reexamine the neglected aspects of Southeast Asian music.” Since the late 1970s, Matherne said Maceda “devoted most of his research to examining Southeast Asian music, in terms of a continuous and contiguous musical cultural area.” This was defined by the “focus on such Southeast Asian principles… such as droning, particular indigenous world views and time conceptions.” Matherne added that as a preservationist and archivist, Maceda “believed that the native music of the Philippines and later, Southeast Asia, in its entirety, needs to be preserved.” “Strata: Spheres of Enlightenment” also included the launch of Santos’ Laon-laon: Perspectives in Transmission and Pedagogy of Musical Traditions in Postcolonial Southeast Asia published by the University of Santo Tomas Publishing House and Musika Jornal 8, a UPCE publication.
US Rotary Clubs donate books to UP Rotary International Past District Governor and UP alumnus Salvador “Bading” Angala (center, in green attire) hands over some of the academic text books donated by Rotary Clubs in Portland, Oregon, USA, to faculty members of the UP Mindanao College of Science and Mathematics. The delivery of the textbooks, with a total weight of 20 tons and shipped in a huge container van to the Mintal Gym, was witnessed by RC Calinan President and UP Mindanao Professor Antonio Obsioma and Rotarian Jing Magno. (Rene Estremera)
The University Library of the University of the Philippines Diliman (UPD) is a major beneficiary of books donated by the Rotary Clubs (RCs) of Oregon, USA through its “Books for the World Project” as coordinated by its proponent Dr. Joyce M.P. Lockard, who graduated from UP in 1967. The books, consisting of used and new ones, are higher education reference materials consisting of 120,000 volumes collected from various schools and academic institutions in Oregon, USA. Around 25,000 of these were donated to UPD’s University Library. The donated books were shipped in four 40-foot container vans to be distributed to various schools districts and colleges in the country through the local RCs in Quezon City; San Pablo City, Laguna; Dagupan, Pangasinan; and Davao City. The donations were sponsored by Ken Dailey, president of the Beaverton RC, and Debbie Hart Hartman, president of the RC of Portland Westside, both of Rotary District 5100 of Oregon, USA.