Thanks, Sir Sid...

Over lunch last Monday, tragic news was served.

One of my bosses asked, "Do you know Sid Hildawa?" I go, "Yeah, he was my professor back in college."

"He passed away."

Whoa! That was really quite some shocking news. Just a couple of weeks ago, we had an event for one of our community projects with the Cultural Center of the Philippines and he was there. He looked very thin though, and I had no idea if that had anything to do with what happened.

Sir Sid was my professor in two elective classes - Photography and Drawing/Sketching. I took up Drawing/Sketching during my senior year, while the rest of my classmates were enrolled in Anthropology. Hahaha! I was the blockhead so getting a different class - a class that I liked and a professor who I heard gave lots of 1.0s and 1.25s - was my little prize for being the slave of the class. Haha! Anyway, our classes were held every Saturday morning, and for three hours, we would be drawing things of all sorts - rubber shoes, egg with a shadow, a mug, a mineral water bottle, our classmates. My favorite topic was portraits. I was proud of my Marilyn Monroe and my Anna Nicole Smith (before she was a pair of boobs, she was a Guess goddess and I loved her at that time), because I've always thought portraits are difficult. But Sir Sid taught us good techniques and how to dissect the human face.

After college, I took another elective class - Photography. Back then, we used the "original" SLR. Digital SLRs were yet to come. Like with my Sketching class, I learned a lot. And the fundamental principles of photography that I learned and which I have been using in my job are all thanks to Sir Sid. My favorite part in Photography was when we would go to the dark room of CCP to develop our photos. We'd treat the film ourselves and get amazed once the photos we took appear on the photo paper. We were like kids who just saw magic. Haha!

Little did I know that I would cross paths with Sir Sid several years after college. When I joined the company I'm working with right now, I was surprised when I found out that we had a community project with him. It really is a small world. I'm not sure if I ever got to walk up to him to tell him I was his student and to thank him once again, and that's sort of a regret. Hay.

But who knows? There might be wireless Internet in heaven, and Sir Sid might stumble upon this little, personal "tribute." I'll also try to locate my sketchbook and see if I can post my drawings.

Thank you, Sir Sid!

About Sid Hildawa via ClickTheCity.com:
Hildawa headed the CCP Visual, Literary and Media Arts Department. A recipient of the 2007 Asian Cultural Council grant, he was likewise an architect, writer, poet and educator. He was a member of the United Architects of the Philippines and Art Association of the Philippines. He was recognized twice by The Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards. He was also a two-time recipient of the Philippine Free Press Literary Award for poetry; author of Regarding Space, published in 2005 by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts under the "Ubod" First Author Series; and a featured artist in several one-man exhibits.

He was a recipient of the CCP Thirteen Artists Award, a British Council fellow for art and architecture, and a poetry fellow at the University of the Philippines' National Writers' Workshop and Iligan National Writers' Workshop.