Government-Department-Hopping

My drawing table with my laptop and notes for my thesis.

What made me the busy this month is my thesis. My first task for this semester is to complete the book or the research. In order to complete this, I've been writing letters to Government Offices and I've been visiting them one by one. I've met different kinds of people. Some are kind and some are just simply rude. Well,  it's a very difficult task especially when you are walking under the scorching heat of the sun. lol I got a slight tan now. Most of the time, I'm walking rather than commuting. My legs are aching once I got home. At night, I just immediately pass out because of exhaustion.I've got a weird sleeping pattern also, so it did cause my health to waver...a bit. But, the whole government-department-hopping did give us a lot of experience as well as lessons on history and heritage.

Going through our cadastre maps in front of many maps.

It looks like an ancient Papyrus library in Egypt...

Aside from the city hall and the city museum, the most memorable trip I had was in DENR (Departmnt of Environment and Natural Resources). It was situated in pier, and it had a "home-like" ambiance for a government building. My thesis group (my friends who are part in my thesis camp) went there to get the lot area and bearing of our site locations. We visited a lot of offices and the most interesting part was looking for the lot areas in cadastre maps. 

The pigment of the map was rather yellowish that the map below it.

The font for maps is also quite old-fashioned. Gothic lettering was not used before.

Reading the date of the map gives off an amazing yet eerie feeling. haha

We were ushered into the Record Section and were granted access to the restricted are (yes, wow). The room was field with rolls of papers on dusty shelves and a lot of people going through different maps and lot areas. We spent the whole afternoon for us to search for our lot areas and we stumbled upon interesting facts. The cadastre maps within the record section has been in the archives for many years. One can determine the development when the cadastre map was dated earlier. The earlier the date of the map, the earlier it has been recorded and developed. Sadly for me, my map was recorded in 1983. It's pretty late, actually. My baranggay was in Indahag (near Lumbia and the Huluga Site) and until now, it has been rather underdeveloped. Joseph's map was rather interesting. His site is located in Gusa and the map rather looks very old. When we checked the record, it was a cadastre map back in 1933. Lol it's like holding a relic and it gives off a weird smell and aura. It means that Gusa has been developed ever since 1933 and that's quite apparent today. 

We visited the museum and found many old pictures of Cagayan de Misamis or the old Cagayan de Oro City.   However, photos are prohibited so we took our time note-taking. I'll be visiting more offices this week, so i'll be quite busy again.