Opening Remarks for "Contested Waters: Review of Literature on Water Contestations"
A pleasant Saturday morning to everyone in attendance. My relationship with Mr. Ryan Dave Rayla goes back at least a decade. He’s one of two people I discreetly refer to as “ex friends,” meaning I was friends first with a former significant other of theirs before I had the privilege of meeting their acquaintance. Ironically, while I don’t really keep in touch with the aforementioned significant others anymore, I have since cultivated quite the fruitful and intellectual friendship with these “ex friends” of mine. I first met Ryan, or “Ryry” to many of his peers, when we were both undergraduate students at what was then USC’s College of Arts and Sciences in the Talamban Campus. I was a Linguistics and Literature major, while he was majoring in Political Science. Upon first impression, and I’m sure many will share this observation of mine, Ryan didn’t strike me as the jolly, uppity type. I honestly found this rather odd. We were college students, after all, and we had our whole life ahead...