Volume 35 Issue 7
OFFICIAL PUBLICATION OF THE ALPHA PHI OMEGA GREATER LOS ANGELES
July 2015
Heal The Ba y Upda te Bay Update
Busca pade . . . Another Blast! Buscapade By Bro. Ferdie Yambot
Fully packed at 56 participants, who happened to be mostly talking at the same time . . . can anyone imagine how chaotic the scene was? A noisy palengke was no match! Munchies were in abundance . . . most notable was Bro AlexA’s macaroni salad packed in small individual pouches. The ever supportive miSis ReneY had oven fresh empanadas, chips and candies (ie. macaroons) and the irresistible spiked chocolates (distributed by new Pi Sis Jane Parel Baquiran). Of course, very special for the Backseat Boyz were aperitifs like the skewered cold cuts along with green mango/pipino slices to make the spirits flow smoother . . . and smooth it was . . . as a total of eight were consumed. The June 27 Buscapade to Pechanga Casino and Resorts is another proof of how GLA conducts its “life to the fullest” mode of living! The minute the bus got boarded in Panorama City (then one hour later in West Covina), non-stop merriment ensued! The Backseat Boyz (the culprits) wasted no time uncorking beverages/ fine spirits as the bus rolled to West Covina where a bigger crowd was in drooling wait. The West Covina crowd, not to be outdone and having most of the munchies (mostly labor of love), raided the “balut” box. Sorry Panorama people . . . if not too many baluts were left. We had to do “something” since Bro. Geoffrey warned us that fine spirits are not okay for consumption in a public parking place. Ha ha ha bottles unnoticeably got emptied! Amidst all these chaos, we managed to collect a poker pool of $500 . . . and as usual with the able hands of Bros Beeboy and Geoffrey, we tripled to $1.5k and everyone was happy. A collective $125 balato to GLA was the end result. A raffle of prizes donated by the ever-generous couple of Sis Irma-Bro Alex along with MaricarA, GraceL, ReneY, among others generated additional proceeds. Continued on page 5
As part of the requirements for the On-Site Captain’s training, volunteers had to attend the Orientation seminar held at the Heal the Bay’s offices in Santa Monica. APO-GLA volunteers included COB Bro. Roehl Reyes, BODs Sisters Emma Galang, Melody Ang-Gayon and yours truly. During the two hour seminar, focus was made on the reasons, goals and missions of Heal the Bay, which was to make the ocean and bay area in Southern California in general and Santa Monica in particular, pollution free. The speaker started with enumerating the importance of our oceans, which make up 70% of our earth’s surface. It is the primary source of protein from the sea, it gives employment to over 200 million people all over the world, it is an important source of oxygen coming from seaweed and plankton constituting 50-70% of the air we breathe and provides recreation and tourism, including 11,000 plus jobs, with tourists spending approximately $ 1.4 billion annually. Typically, ocean pollution come from the following sources, our sewers and storm drains, which surprisingly are two separate systems. Sewage typically comes from inside, from our toilets and sinks; whereas storm drains collect runoff water and trash from the outside. In the early 1980s, majority of the ocean’s pollutants came from sewage. Cont’d on page 4