Take Me To Nowhere Plains

This is the interior of La Funeraria Paz. Sorry it isn’t clear, I didn’t want to bring out Aureliano in case the funeral parlor had rules about cameras.

So you might be wondering, why is Gett in a funeral parlor?

You see, for News Writing class, Miss Chay Hofilena made us go on tag-alongs. We students had to ‘tag along’ a reporter/journalist for two days and write two stories for class. My group (Anton, Raiza and Pau) was assigned to Probe. I thank my lucky stars that we got Probe. Much better than Phil Star. hehe.

Anyways, the Probe team had this story that involved an embalmer. After much communication with the awesome Dessa (who’s an Atenean, btw), Pau and I hopped into a taxi on the way to Araneta in QC.

That’s a viewing area btw.

It’s my first time to go to a funeral parlor actually. But for some reason I wasn’t that scared. I mean, look at this:

This is a really scary looking corridor. But yeah it’s much scarier in real life. But aside from that corridor (which I believe will haunt me tonight. Dear Neptune.), it wasn’t half that bad. I think it’s because of the incessant reading of Norwegian Wood that the thought of “Death is a part of life” is embedded in my head.

Anyways, it was really nice of Miss Jen, Miss Zan, and their two cameramen to let Pau and me follow them around while they shot some footages of the viewing rooms, the incinerators, and the chapels.

This chapel, I forgot what it’s called though, looks really swanky.

I got really excited going around Funeraria Paz because 1) I’ve never been to one before, and 2) I wanted to work on this story involving a necrophilia-themed story between a funeral embalmer and a girl. So now I have an idea on how to write it!

And we got to a deceased person already embalmed and already set in a casket up close. May that deceased person’s soul rest in peace.

After Funeraria Paz, Pau and I headed back to school. And I kept thinking, wow. Fate. I think some strange forces are at work here. Histo class got cancelled (which starts from 2:30 btw. Call time with Probe was 2:00). RegCom shoot got cancelled too. Something was pushing me to go to Funeraria Paz. I really enjoyed myself there. I think documentaries are my calling. (Hello, Pat Evangelista’s talk during the Rappler talk!)

And then there’s my group getting assigned to Probe.

And now that I look back, it all roots back to the email Kai (my awesome awesome News ed) sent me and Pau nine months ago. I think if Kai didn’t send that email, I would probably be taking up prod classes now.

So yeah this post is not only written to write about my adventure at Funeraria Paz, but this is also to thank my awesome possum editor for that email.

Thank you Kai. Look what you have done.