(Noel Pabalate/ MANILA BULLETIN)

To say that Professor Clarita Carlos is devastated by the apparent destruction of the Manila Central Post Office building by fire is a massive understatement. "My sadness is in full throttle as I watch this building, built during the American occupation, buried even in our consciousness," Carlos, House Speaker Martin Romualdez's chief policy adviser on security and defense concerns, wrote in a Facebook post Monday morning, May 22. The 76-year-old shared to her followers her sentimental musings along with a sad picture of the post office engulfed in flames. "Once upon a time in the not so recent past, I was a regular habitué in this beautiful historic building.  At the time, I was writing my MA thesis on the depth and breadth of functional cooperation on POSTAL matters," she wrote. "Over countless weeks/months, I patiently pored over voluminous archival materials therein attempting to trace the volume and direction of cooperation among selected Asian countries, including the Philippines under the Asian Oceanic Postal Union," said Carlos, a retired professor of political science at the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman. "Were these archival documents kept in water proof vaults? Or, will these archival materials be reduced to ashes, which other scholars can no longer research on," she asked. Only time will tell if the answer to this will lead to further heartache.