Mang Tani finished agricultural engineering at Araneta U in 1982 and was immediately hired by PAG-ASA, with the late Ernie Baron as his mentor. He retired in May 2010 and moved to Australia where he was hired as aviation meteorologist in Darwin. His wife stayed here with their three kids aged 27, 24, and 22. She was still working in PAG-ASA but went to Darwin to visit Mang Tani on his birthday in February, 2012. While there, she had a heart attack.
“She was in coma for two weeks,” he says. “It’s a miracle that she was revived. She had to undergo therapy. In June, we came home and then the offer from GMA came so dito na lang muna ako uli.”
Mang Tani is glad to host an environmental show like “Hamon ng Kalikasan”. “We live in the Pacific Ring of Fire kaya maraming disaster sa atin. We really should teach our people to understand more these destructive phenomena to lessen human casualties.”
For its pilot episode tomorrow night at 10:30PM, the show will tackle floods, whether caused by typhoons or monsoon rains. Mang Tani will investigate the contributing factors that caused some of the worst flooding in our history. He’ll be assisted at the GMA Weather Central by weather consultant Karen Berthelsen-Cardenas, who weather webpage on Facebook since Ondoy is widely followed. “Hamon ng Kalikasan” will be shown Thursday nights, 10:30 to 11PM on GMA News Channel 11.
