" I have recorded in this book happenings and encounters in the first 33 years of my life. I am half expecting that they are, for the most part, of interest only to me, the curious members of my family, and friends, who are either nosy of what I had gone through, or just evoking memories of their own youthful past in 20th Century Philippines. These memories are mostly fragmented recollections of what I heard and saw when growing up in a small village, and while going to school and starting life, after the end of the 2nd World War and the start of Philippine independence. This book is about the unadorned simple life in a village of a newly independent country that was slowly emerging from a backward colonial past and its coming of age after the 2nd World War. At the people level, I have tried to narrate how the young typically responded to the demands of the outside world. Here you will meet family and friends, ordinary people, as well as some of the colorful characters in the 20th century Philippines I encountered from the sidelines of power. "