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Tech competition for women returns to the Philippines

��ý — Fri, 14 Aug 2020 08:34:03 +0000

She Loves Tech, a competition for women and technology is returning to the Philippines through its partnership with QBO Innovation Hub.

Scheduled for October, the global competition—and accompanying conference—has expanded its reach over the last five years. Alumni startups have gone on to raise over US$100 million in aggregate funding from some of the world’s top investors, including Sequoia Capital, Vertex Ventures, Wavemaker, Microsoft, and Amazon.

Due to the pandemic, the sixth edition of the competition will be held virtually in over 30 countries across North and South America, Africa, Europe, Asia, and Australia. “One of the things we’re most excited about is that going fully online gives us a great opportunity to reach a wider audience and help even more entrepreneurs than we ever could have,” says Rhea See, co-founder of She Loves Tech.

Winning the local edition of She Loves Tech in 2019 inspired Vesl, a platform for SMEs that provides per invoice-based insurance, “to keep aiming for scalable impact,” said Maureen Nova Ledesma, Vesl’s co-founder.

The winner of the local round will get to pitch their idea on a global stage. The global winner will receive an equity-free cash prize of $15,000 from She Loves Tech affiliate fund, Teja Ventures; media and mentorship prizes; fast-track access to partner funds and accelerator programs; and in-house advisory services.

“QBO has been growing our efforts to develop the participation of female founders in the tech startup ecosystem… and She Loves Tech has been a key partner,” said Katrina Rausa Chan, director of QBO Innovation Hub. “I’m looking forward to what this year’s participants will bring to the now-virtual stage.”

Applications will be accepted until Sept. 4 at .��

Impact Hackathon 2020 seeks to support innovative solutions to pressing social challenges

��ý — Thu, 06 Aug 2020 08:31:26 +0000

By Patricia B. Mirasol

Impact Hub Manila (IHM) brings back its Impact Hackathon this year in the virtual space to find and support digital innovations for current social challenges.

“Last year, I had a dream: to provide the same support we’ve been doing here and bring that outside,” said Ces Rondario, founder and CEO of IHM, a social impact incubator and network of entrepreneurs and changemakers. “We wanted to find a way to decentralize stuff we were doing here in Manila and contribute to countryside development.”

The second Impact Hackathon aims to find innovations for social challenges amid the pandemic. Set to run from August 17 to 21, the virtual event will concentrate on five themes: climate change, education, food and agriculture, health and wellness, and smart cities.

TIMELINE AND ACTIVITIES

Participating teams are expected to create minimum viable products by the end of the hackathon. Winning ideas will be incubated by IHM and its partners, who will also support the scaling of the projects to ensure impact and sustainability. Winners will take home over US$100,000 worth of prizes, including access to IHM’s incubation program and its global network of experts and entrepreneurs.

Learning sessions will serve as a platform for discussions and network-building among participants, mentors, and partners.

The hackathon will culminate with a festival titled “2050 Fest,” in which experts, industry leaders, and collaborators come together for panel discussions and the announcement of winners.

The timeline is as follows:

July 1 Opening of registration portal

Aug. 17 Opening program

Aug. 18–21 Hackathon proper and learning sessions

Aug. 22–23 Jury deliberation

Aug. 24 “2050 Fest” culmination program

Aug. 25 Announcement of national winners

Teams are advised to have someone who can pitch and effectively tell the story behind their solution.
Malcolm Tan of Technicorum Holdings Pte Ltd., one of this year’s hackathon partners, also suggested looking into international and inclusive solutions. “Don’t be just restricted by geographic location. Look beyond your borders.”

Ms. Rondario shared that they are in talks with telco partners and are looking into providing Internet support for the participants. “We want to make this as accessible as possible.” She also hopes to see more women joining the event.

SOCIAL INNOVATION CATALYST

Impact Hackathon is part of Impact 2050, a multi-year program designed by IHM to create large-scale economic impact through cultivating the Philippine startup and innovation ecosystem.

Partners from Impact Hackathon 2019 like the Quezon City government, Friedrich Naumann Foundation, Asian Development Bank, and KMC will be back to support this year’s hackathon along with new collaborators such as the Office of Senator Francis Pangilinan, iProcure, Unifinity, Salesforce, Technicorum Holdings Pte Ltd., Multisys Technologies Corporation, and TrueDigital among others. Ms. Rondario likewise mentioned the support of the Department of Agriculture, National Economic and Development Authority, Department of Trade and Industry, Department of Information and Communications Technology, and the Department of Science and Technology.

For more details, go to . Interested participants can register at .

Working (out) from home? Four reasons to start exercising during the quarantine

��ý — Thu, 09 Apr 2020 01:54:29 +0000

Among the many changes COVID-19 has forced upon us, a general lack of movement and the realization of just how fragile our health can be are perhaps the most immediate in our daily lives.

With the possibility of the government’s quarantine measures extending and businesses struggling to find ways to continue servicing their customers, workers need to find ways to stay both healthy and productive in this period of isolation and social distancing.

But there’s a lot we can do, even from the confines of our homes, to keep our energy levels high and our immune systems strong as we support our nationwide efforts to beat COVID-19. Chief among them—commit to a simple daily exercise routine.

Here are four reasons why.

1. It boosts your immune system.

Our immune systems are our bodies’ defense against viruses like COVID-19. And while medicine and treatment are important, the best way to ensure we’re safe against sickness is to make sure we don’t get sick in the first place.

Time and again, exercise has been proven to naturally boost our immune systems. It lowers our levels of inflammatory cytokines, a by-product of our bodies fighting against infections. This, in turn, aids in preventing cardiovascular disease as well as type 2 diabetes, and osteoporosis, among others. Safe to say, exercise is definitely a proactive way of boosting our body’s natural defenses against unwanted viruses and bacteria.

2. It helps manage your mental wellbeing.

Fear and uncertainty are high these days, and that stress can sap a lot of energy out of our days. Many studies have found that exercise is among the best natural tools we have on-hand to improve our mental wellbeing, reducing anxiety, depression, and negative moods by improving not just self-esteem but also cognitive function.

On a scientific level, increased blood circulation during exercise leads to higher oxygen levels in our brains, helping us perform better. Exercise also produces endorphins, improving our moods, reducing stress levels, and leading to better sleep quality.

With our daily routines completely changed by this pandemic, setting aside time to exercise gives us control in a time where we are so limited by circumstance. That, in itself, is a huge boost to mental wellbeing.

3. It can be a great avenue for team-building.

For entrepreneurs, not being able to interact with your teams is a real problem. Even for firms that can still functionally operate remotely, having a separated workforce can really kill momentum and lead to employees becoming disconnected from one another.

To that end, exercise programs can do a lot to boost morale and keep co-workers connected. Using video conferencing tools like Skype or Zoom, it’s easy to schedule three days in the week for a 30-minute session where the team comes together for a quick workout. If you’ve ever done burpees before, you know that having people around you can be a huge motivator.

Bonus points if you can bring in a professional instructor to lead the group, as well as provide virtual guidance to each person. My team in Village Fitness has been running different formats of virtual programs for our members with the objective of keeping them engaged while our facilities are closed. We‘ve begun offering group sessions for our corporate clients as well, facilitating classes over Zoom.

4. Online programs have never been more accessible.

Given that equipment might not be as accessible during the enhanced community quarantine, it’s high time to get creative when designing fitness programs. Regular gym goers may be disappointed in seeing their progress melt away as they’re stuck at home. But there are still many resources available online to ensure your progress doesn’t end during the quarantine.

With the right combination of bodyweight fitness programs and mindful food choices, you can still supercharge your day and keep your health high. Exercise programs such as HIIT can stimulate the metabolism to burn more calories, while tempo-based bodyweight training can help you build muscle, even without heavy weights around.

With so many options available online, we’re almost spoiled for choice. But one important consideration when selecting a program for you is your personal fitness goal. Being clear with what you want to achieve is the first step in actualizing results. If mobility is what you want to achieve, maybe Yoga or Animal flow can help. If you want to be building strength and bulking up, find a trainer online that can help you make do with what you have lying around the house. Now is the best time to reflect and figure out what your fitness goal really is.

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Ryan Fermin is an entrepreneur and startup founder specializing in implementing tech into lifestyle development and sports. If you’re interested in learning more about building a personal or professional fitness program, you can reach him at ryanfermin.villagefitness@gmail.com.

Remember this when you decide to pursue love as a career

��ý — Tue, 18 Feb 2020 02:38:53 +0000

I did it. Last year, I took the leap of faith and quit my full-time corporate marketing job to do what I considered to be more purposeful creative work. It’s been a hilly journey since making that choice. I mean, there were definitely a couple of things I had to unlearn the hard way and others that I still need to learn more about. But the people I’ve met through working with have inspired me to write and share more of this type of story: of people blazing a trail.

It’s nice to know that it isn’t just me who’s challenged by what comes with choosing to forge our own paths. Even with the joy and fulfillment we get when we pursue what we love, the pursuit itself is hard. It entails a lot of sacrifice and work. But, from what I’ve observed in my experiences and of those I speak to, it’s important to constantly ground ourselves in this love we have and open ourselves up to how much we can grow through it, and overcome the different challenges we face.

Now, for this first feature, I wanted to share what I picked up from getting to know Rio Estuar, the founder of .

At a young age, her love for fashion inspired her to start “Kalye RIO,” her own streetwear brand deeply rooted in Filipino culture. As she grew and became more mindful of the waste she and the many in the fashion industry produced, she felt the need to change our relationship with fashion. Her love for designing and creating fashion pieces remained, but it was transformed and strengthened in another way.

Love is a big enough word.

Rio could have stuck it out with her streetwear brand. At the time, business was good. But because it wasn’t good for the environment, it wasn’t good enough.

Since Rio’s love for fashion couldn’t blot out her love for the environment, she decided to say ‘yes’ to both. Despite Kalye RIO still being on the upswing, Rio switched gears and drove towards taking better care and conservation of the environment. And so she arrived at “RIOtaso,” an up-and-coming sustainable fashion brand that upcycles scrap fabric into conscious options.

Rio is mightily proud of this new business of hers. But, like in all things, there are drawbacks to saying “yes” to love in business. The fashion industry today is not designed for environmentally conscious brands, and the prevailing business model reflects that. But where Rio loses in quick wins, she gains in fulfilment. As with all other relationships in life, it’s true–love triumphs even through struggle.

For young and aspiring entrepreneurs, Rio advises that you always be genuine with your intentions and never forget your “why”, your purpose.

And I hope you remember to grow with the love you have for what you set out to do.

—————

Regina Victoria is in the business of enkindling love and light. Currently, she is the Community and Communications Manager at . You can to learn more about Crowdfunding and the creative and social enterprises (like !) they work with.

Crowdfunding | Podcast Give a Hoot! dissects social change through communication

��ý — Wed, 28 Aug 2019 03:29:28 +0000

Give a Hoot! is a podcast by Wiseowl, a strategy firm specializing in communication for social change, on the PumaPodcast platform. Targeting communicators and social change agents, the series aims to discuss relevant and timely topics that focus on and involve communication.

The hosts will do this by exploring “elements of communication, the range of audiences, current practices, and stimulating possibilities in the field”. Furthermore, they will be using actual events and campaigns to further illustrate their points.

Wiseowl needs helps in gathering funds to produce their first season, making a total of 5 episodes. They currently have 4 episodes planned out revolving around the following topics:

Call-out culture on social media
How the masa, the country’s largest population group, consumes media (namely radio, tabloids, and online videos)
Gen Z as the future of brands and movements
Creative awards and their impact on social causes

Should funding exceed their current goal, the money will go towards the production of more episodes and community-building events.

Click through if you’re interested to help or want to find out more about the project.

Crowdfunding | Podcast Go Hard Girls shines the spotlight on female athletes

��ý — Tue, 27 Aug 2019 07:53:42 +0000

Go Hard Girls is a podcast spearheaded by Ceej Tantengco, sports reporter, on the PumaPodcast platform. It aims to tell the stories of female Filipino athletes who often receive a fraction of the support and recognition that their male counterparts enjoy.

“I heard how UAAP champions almost didn’t play because the basketball camps when they were growing up were only for boys, how record-breaking teams don’t even have sponsorships for sports bras, how the average Filipino doesn’t know their names,” said Tantengco.

Unlike the usual sports talk show, Go Hard Girls combines creative storytelling and in-depth interviews. This may be seen in their first episode, which tells the of 5-peat champion NU Lady Bulldogs.

While the team was able to bootstrap its production, they need help in funding the rest of the season. This makes a total of 10 episodes for the whole year.

“By mounting a successful crowdfunding campaign, we are communicating to the world that not only are these stories of Filipina athletes amazing, but that they are important, and that we as a community are willing to take up the cause ourselves so that these stories can be shared and hopefully inspire more women to become great athletes,” said Tantengco.

If you would like to support the project, click through . You may also watch this video for more details:

Switching gears: Celeste Cafe and Cycles throws coffee into the mix

��ý — Tue, 21 May 2019 11:12:21 +0000

When one is asked to name an “iconic duo”, cycling and coffee isn’t exactly what comes to mind. Celeste Cafe and Cycles aims to change just that.

“Cycling and coffee have had a long history together, from races to pit stops when riding your bike, so we decided to put a specialty coffee shop with our showroom to showcase both worlds the best we could,” said Andrew Maravillas, COO of Celeste Cycles.

The cafe is the latest experience offered by Celeste Cycles, one of the country’s largest retailers of top-of-the-line cycling products. Inspired by Hong Kong-style bike shops, businessman and biking enthusiast Paul Tan put up the first store in 2017.

While the cafe is a fun addition to the Celeste Cycles experience, older patrons can still enjoy the products and services that they’ve come to expect of the shop– along with a few upgrades.

They still carry familiar brands like Bianchi, Factor, and Dimond. But jumping in is Devel Project, a Filipino concept cycling brand that serves as the country’s foot-in-the-door to the international market. Devel Mach 1, the brand’s first concept bike, is already up for sale.

And aside from their mechanic area designated especially for repairs and maintenance, new tech-powered facilities help give cyclists their best biking experience. This includes an indoor training facility powered by Acer Xplova’s New Noza Smart Trainers and the Precision Bike Fitting Studio equipped with 3D Motionlogic Systems.

“We also created the space to serve as a meeting place for cyclists where we can just simply hang out and talk about our passions, adventures, and future rides,” Maravillas said.

Five reasons to drop the weights and get into OCR this year

��ý — Thu, 21 Mar 2019 07:58:56 +0000

No New Year’s resolution is complete without the annual grappling with one’s fitness lifestyle. Gym memberships spike and suddenly everyone is an expert on the nuances of the Keto diet, intermittent fasting, or some form of ‘quick cleanse’ that they swear works like magic. Fast forward several months and the enthusiasm seems to wane, with most falling out because the routine is monotonous and uninspiring.
Enter, obstacle course racing (OCR). You’ve seen it on shows like American Ninja Warrior, and shared online through popular events like Tough Mudder and Spartan Race. OCR is the country’s latest fitness activity, taking an innovative approach towards traditional marathons.
Here are five reasons why you should be getting into OCR this year:

Breaks up your workout routine

OCR has leaped in popularity among fitness enthusiasts looking to swap their resistance and cardio training for something more functional. Instead of repetitive pull-ups on a bar, you’re scaling and descending walls. Instead of mindless running on a treadmill, you’re leaping across gaps and between platforms.
There are a number of reasons OCR has leapfrogged other fitness trends like spinning and CrossFit, but none so potent as the effect it has on one’s total well-being. Later in this article I’ll be diving into the psychological impact OCR has on one’s self-esteem that makes it such an effective way to rehaul one’s lifestyle.

Pushes you to overcome obstacles (literally and figuratively)

From swinging through more familiar playground monkey bars to running straight up a vertical wall, there are many obstacles (some easier than others) that you need to literally overcome during a race. Some fan favorites include the: Warped Wall, the iconic ‘Ninja Warrior’ finisher, and the Spear Throw, making you feel like a Spartan straight out of 300.
The obstacles are definitely fun, but more importantly they require technique to accomplish properly. As with any challenge, these obstacles can eventually be conquered with constant practice. This is where that psychological boost comes in.
Facing a mental challenge requires commitment to conquering it, and some creativity in tackling it. OCR provides a hard task (overcoming an obstacle), a platform for training (OCR classes), a support system during race (OCR teams), and finally the satisfaction of finishing the task (finishing the race).
Challengers take on a “Growth Mindset” during the weeks of OCR training, as a person aims to be able to be better than they were last week in training. As with any skill training regiment, it’s a commitment to progress, not perfection. And that’s a mindset one can take into any challenge — be it building your body, or your budding business.

Builds camaraderie and teamwork

Need a great team building activity? Look no further than OCR races which encourage people to help each other overcome the obstacles on display. The ‘Tough Mudder’ race is a classic example of one race where you sign-up with a team and help each other throughout the race. It was such a popular race that even the cadets of the Marine Corp of the Philippines competed and helped not just their fellow cadets but other competitors too.
Take the Rings for example. In this obstacle, racers need to swing from ring to ring, much like they would a set of monkey bars. But well into the race, this can be difficult for less athletic challengers. This is where teamwork can come in. A number of racers took to riding on the shoulders of their teammates in crossing the rings, taking the strain off their shoulders and just having fun with it. The rules are intentionally loose in these races, to allow for great team building moments like this.

Become part of a growing community

There are a growing number of fitness enthusiasts who have already taken their first few steps toward competing in an OCR race. Some celebrities have even joined in such as Nico Bolzico, Erwan Heussaf, and Maggie Wilson-Consunji to name a few. On more than one occasion, they even compete alongside you on the same obstacles at the same time.
The OCR community is an ever-growing one and builds that sense of belonging through a shared common experience which is difficult but satisfying once over. The camaraderie that OCR creates a feeling of belonging. Competitors join a tribe of fellow enthusiasts passionate about growing OCR in the country. The POSF (Philippines Obstacle Sports Federation) have done a great job so far and was even able to have OCR become an official SEA games sport — just another obstacle that the OCR tribe has successfully conquered.

And it’s never been easier to start

More and more races have been sprouting up with brands such as Tough Mudder and Spartan providing more races as compared to previous years. This, along with the upcoming launch of the new world-class OCR facility opening in SM Aura: Pretty Huge Obstacles, has made it incredibly easy to get into OCR. There is even a group who handles the grassroots of OCR: OCR Academy, that caters to everyone from adults, to kids, to even pets.
Obstacle course racing is a holistic path to functional fitness, allowing competitors to join a growing tribe of people bent on challenging themselves, and helping each other grow in the process. It’s never been easier to join in. If you’re truly committed to getting better, why wait for another new year to make that resolution?

Traditional art, social media smarts: Marius Black’s hopeful, woodblock Manila

��ý — Sat, 29 Dec 2018 07:17:59 +0000

Only now, over a decade into his career as an artist, Marius A. Funtilar feels he’s finally found a semblance of success. With it, Funtilar — known professionally as Marius Black — says he’s come full circle.
“If [I] were to tell my younger self that it would take me 15 years [to reach this kind of success], I would have given up then,” he said.
Last Dec. 14, Funtilar launched his fourth solo show, “Unnoticed Beauty”, at Kendo, a cafe-cum-gallery in Cubao, along with an accompanying book exploring pieces from his Manila Ukiyo-e series, where he recreates scenes from the urban jungles of Metro Manila in the style of traditional Japanese woodblock print.
Funtilar’s early work consisted heavily of self-portraits and comics produced with his wife. Culled from the world around him, his scenes were dominated by stark black and white, with streaks of yellow and red. He describes those early pieces as attempts at releasing a darkness in him, manifesting in surrealist oil paintings.
Today, Marius Black is best known for the beautiful narratives of hope he tells through his bright depictions of everyday Manila. Same setting, different story.

Manila Ukiyo-E is a series of hand-painted art prints depicting the daily goings-on of Manila’s denizens, “not giving up their right to exist and still enjoy life here in the Philippines.” Funtilar hopes the series might serve to inspire audiences by highlighting the silent courage of struggling through day after day in Metro Manila.
Funtilar begins each piece with his digital camera, snapping shots of his surroundings. He uses these photos as references for his artworks, outlined in pencil, then inked.
The hand-drawn pieces are then scanned and printed on watercolor paper. Funtilar brings the scenes to life with watercolors, gouache, and color markers, making each artwork in Manila Ukiyo-E a print-original hybrid.
“I found what was buried in me: I love colors, I love working on papers,” he said. “I just came back.”

A wider reach

As Funtilar worked through the darkness of his early art and began producing what would become his signature style, people began to take notice. But it wasn’t in galleries that he found his following. Like so many modern success stories, he found his success on social media.

“I had to unlearn all that I learned as a gallery curator,” he said. “The landscape is changing so you have to rethink everything, from how you produce to how you show your art.”
On platforms like Facebook, Funtilar was able to reach a wider audience. On Reddit, he could interact with fans and get commission jobs — more now than he can handle, he admits. And it was through social media that he received his biggest gig yet: working with the Light Rail Manila Corp. (LRMC) to create large-scale Manila Ukiyo-e pieces for the LRT Ikot campaign.
Back in October, Funtilar’s ‘Antay’, a bright rendition of the LRT EDSA station, made its rounds online, catching the eye of LRMC president and chief executive officer Juan F. Alfonso. As with the rest of the series, ‘Antay’ found the beautiful in the ordinary. Gritty in its realism, but hopeful in its depiction— mirroring Funtilar’s own paradigm shift.
“I was able to make something, subconsciously, a scenery that is heartbreaking but palatable, I guess, but colorful. I give it a story just to [show] what I see as hopeful,” he said. “It’s how I want to imagine the world to be, from what I see.”
Funtilar’s work can be found and on .

L’Oréal Philippines relaunches grant for Filipino women in science

��ý — Fri, 23 Nov 2018 04:10:45 +0000

This November, L’Oréal Philippines and UNESCO once again opens nominations for its program to PhD holders among the Filipino women researcher and scientist communities. Nominations will be accepted this month up until the end of March 2019. A grant of P400,000 will be given to the National Fellow to be awarded on June 2019.
Established in 1998, FWIS aims to support and recognize women researchers who have dedicated their work in finding solutions to the some of the world’s most pressing challenges, as well as encourage young women to take the first step in changing the world through their exceptional ability in the field of science and technology.
“We want to ensure that research in every field takes full advantage of the intelligence, creativity, and passion of women,” said Carmel Valencia, L’Oréal Philippines’ corporate communications manager. “Our fundamental belief is that the world needs science and science needs women, because women in science have the power to change the world.”
Over the last 20 years, the program:

granted fellowships to 3,022 talented young women to pursue research projects
honored 102 laureates, including three eventual Nobel Prize winners
established 53 national and regional fellowships in 117 countries
partnered with over 50 scientific institutions and 400 scientists worldwide

L’Oréal Philippines celebrated the return of the program in the country last June 5 through the awarding of the newest FWIS National Fellow for the Philippines: chemical oceanographer Dr. Charissa Ferrera. Her work focuses on educating and advocating for water quality improvement and more sustainable practices in the waters of Anda and Bolinao. Five months after winning the program, Ferrera continues to work alongside science communicators, social scientists, and local government units to improve the fisherfolks’ environment and their livelihood.
“The program provided me with a truly great opportunity to take my research, apply it in communities where it will be most useful in, and create social impact – something that I have always strived to do as a scientist,” Ferrera said. “It was also a chance to raise awareness and inspire more individuals to pursue careers in science.”
L’Oréal Philippines and UNESCO both believe that continuing the conversation and shedding light on roadblocks for women in this field are essential to truly move the needle towards closing the gender gap in the sciences.
“In 2018, we embarked on this journey with L’Oréal Philippines to provide Filipino women researchers and scientists a platform to overcome the challenges they face in the field,” said Prof. Shahbaz Khan, director and representative of UNESCO Jakarta. “In 2019, we want to continue the journey and include more stakeholders in the conversation to be able to inspire development and purposive action towards enabling women to be leaders in science.”

Hello, hallyu: The meteoric rise of K-pop

��ý — Wed, 31 Oct 2018 03:53:39 +0000

Ghia Lim, 22, is a die-hard K-pop fan. She streams her favorite idols’ music videos to help them win in Korean music shows. She creates original fan content and even hosts local K-pop events. For the college student and PR specialist, K-pop has always been a part of her life. “I’ve been into K-pop for as long as I can remember,” she said, listing off names of Korean supergroups. “My mom was a fan of BoA, and I naturally got started on getting into the male groups of SM Entertainment, like DBSK and Super Junior.”
While graduate student Mary De los Santos only got into K-pop during a trip to South Korea in February, it has already infiltrated her daily routine. When the 24-year old gets into her car, the first thing she does is crank up the speakers and blast her favorite songs. “Even when I study or work out, my ears are listening to K-pop nonstop… This is on a daily basis and honestly, I haven’t listened to English or Western songs in months.”

A global success story

Ghia and Mary are among the millions of Filipinos who have been swept by hallyu, or the phenomenal spread of Korean culture around the world. It made its introduction during the latter part of the 2000s, when acts like Wonder Girls, 2NE1, Big Bang, and Girls Generation released a string of hits that made it on international charts. It was in 2012, however, that K-pop made its grand entrance into the mainstream with solo artist PSY redefining vitality with his unprecedented hit, “Gangnam Style”. It was the . Today, those numbers sit well over three billion. PSY took Korean music out of the peninsula, and onto the global stage, making appearances everywhere from to .
One can argue that K-pop has never been as big as it is today. Girl group Black Pink’s “Ddu-Du Ddu-Du” music video debut , garnering 36.2 million views in only 24 hours. Global sensation BTS released two albums in 2018 , a first for any K-pop act. Just recently, Spotify revealed that more than 14.2 billion K-pop tracks have been streamed globally, translating to a total of 46 billion minutes of listening since 2015. “[T]he hallyu wave is truly an Asian success story. For a genre that’s in a different language and from a very different culture, it is inspiring to see how K-pop is making its mark on the global stage.” said Eve Tan, Team Lead of Shows & Editorial under Spotify Southeast Asia.
This success story is very much felt here in the Philippines. Anne Curtis-Smith, a , for her 21st anniversary in show business. There’s even a , Hello K-Idol, where aspiring male Filipinos are trained for 10 weeks in the hopes of becoming a K-pop idol.

Figures and fandom

SM Entertainment, JYP Entertainment, and YG Entertainment, the “Big 3” of the South Korean entertainment industry, in January 2018. Clever marketing strategies might be one of the biggest factors behind K-Pop’s massive success. Embracing its global audience, songs are often released in different languages (such as the Mandarin, Spanish, and English versions of GOT7’s “Lullaby”), and groups like NCT are .

But marketing strategies are meaningless without the participation of consumers, and K-pop fans are a dedicated bunch. Ivanne, a 25-year old restaurant manager, owns 13 BTOB and three Super Junior albums, each costing P750 to P1,000. She has the official light sticks of both groups, which can cost up to P2,050. Ivanne has also attended several concerts, one of which is a BTOB concert in Jakarta. She shared, “A K-pop concert is one of the most magical events I’ve been to… It’s a phenomenon one should experience to be able to understand and comprehend.”
Ghia Lim, who professed to have “bought almost everything from albums to official tissue packets”, once flew to South Korea just to purchase Wanna One merchandise. Aside from the group’s official lightstick (the release of which she timed with her visit), she also bought their Lens Nine contact lens, Miniso figurines, Lotteria calendars, and even Ghana and Yohi chocolates. “If I put together everything that I’ve bought in the course of my life… I’d be able to send a few people to a private college,” she said.

For most, this all might sound a little absurd. But for these K-pop fans, it’s a way to give back to their idols. “I am willing to spend because I find true happiness, not only because of the albums and posters but because of these people [that] we idolize.” shared 14-year old high school student Dani*. “Fans go through a lot, and to us, our idols are our safe place, the ones that are there to make us happy even with just one video.”
And with that shared love comes a sense of community among fans. “When I first entered K-pop, it was an unfamiliar territory, but the fandom that I am in made that transition easy,” Ivanne said. “It’s one of the wonders of K-Pop actually, it’s truly a community. Despite the language barriers, at the end of the day we’re all like family.”

Continuous expansion

The swell of K-pop continues to expand, and the West is taking notice. Collaborations like Black Pink and Dua Lipa’s , and Wendy (of Red Velvet) and John Legend’s are testaments to the global recognition of K-pop’s unstoppable appeal. And artists are leveraging that appeal beyond YouTube and Spotify, with supergroup BTS recently and .
While these are exciting times for the K-pop industry, many remain uncertain if hallyu will be a permanent fixture in the cultural zeitgeist. As with any fad, its staying power is only as strong as its fanbase. To that end, K-pop’s superfans are a strong indicator that the world won’t be saying goodbye to hallyu anytime soon.

Editor’s note: Some names in this article have been changed at their request.

Four not-so-starving artists on making art and making a living

��ý — Fri, 26 Oct 2018 11:34:31 +0000

Ask any kid what they want to be when they grow up and you’ll likely get the same parent-approved answers—doctor, lawyer, engineer. But for a lot of kids, their idea of a fulfilling life is one wielding paint brushes and squeezing paint tubes.
The stereotype of the “starving artist” creeps in early. A passion for painting gets downplayed into a hobby. Parents, concerned for their children’s financial security, push them towards those same career paths—doctor, lawyer, engineer. Society-at-large is generally lukewarm towards the idea of arts as a means to make a living.
But the myth of the starving artist is truly just that—a myth.
As art and pop culture conventions become more prevalent, artists and convention-goers are getting more opportunities to meet each other and break the stereotype that you can’t create art and make a living at the same time.
At Komiket, a comics and art convention that took place over Oct. 13 and 14 at The Elements in Centris, Quezon City, we found and profiled four artists who proved that a non-traditional job can be both financially and personally fulfilling.

Marcela Suller (IG: @marcella_suller)

Number of years as a professional artist: Three years
Current work: Full-time artist
Background:
Marcella took up Political Science at Ateneo de Manila University, following her parents plan for her to be a lawyer. After graduation, Marcela interned at an art studio where she received formal training.
What made you pursue art?
“That’s always been my dream ever since I was a kid,” Marcelo said, describing a childhood spent reading illustrated books. “[But] I grew up in the province and it wasn’t normal to become an artist as your profession before.”
So when she went down to Manila for college from her hometown in La Union, it was to study political science, a path to becoming a lawyer.
During her years at Ateneo, Instagram had started to become the platform of choice for local artists looking to share their works. Marcela said that seeing so many others making a living off of their art inspired her to revisit her childhood dream.
After graduating in 2014, Marcela interned in an art studio to hone her natural talents before jumping headlong into her new career.
“I tried to do realistic illustrations but I only got frustrated because I couldn’t exactly draw the person so I just did it stylized,” Marcela said. “I made it cute. I was also inspired by children’s book illustrations and things I saw on Instagram.”
As the industry and fanbases grew with the help of conventions and events like Komiket, Marcela said that the money she made off of her art commissions had begun surpassing her salary as a graphic designer at the small ad agency she worked at. Seeing this, her parents eventually gave in and supported her career as an artist.
Unlike most artists featured at conventions, Marcela doesn’t do commission-based art as a side-hustle. Her steady stream of income comes from consignment deals with arts-and-crafts stores in malls to carry her work.
What’s the hardest part of being in the industry?
Just like her shift from political science to fine arts, the beginning was always the hardest.
“At first, there weren’t any stores [that carried art merchandise] yet,” she said. “There weren’t that many craft and art stores in malls and the bazaars were rare back in 2015. So what I earned wasn’t regular every month.”
“But now that there are more cons and there are more stores that cater to artists, what I earn is more regular,” she said.
Marcela said she’s attended dozens of conventions over the last three years, and it’s done a lot to further her career. There she got to meet other professional artists she only knew about through Instagram and get tips from fellow artists to improve her art.
What would you say to budding artists hoping to enter the industry?
“At the start, you might get disappointed because you’re not meeting your target goal. It’s really going to take time,” she said. “In my first year, it didn’t work, so I needed a day job. In my second year, I still had a day job but I also included my art. Once I got more skills, there, I managed to go full time on my business.”
According to Marcela, attending art events and finding a circle of fellow artist friends are essential to furthering your career.
“In college, I didn’t know any artists. It was such an out-of-this-world concept that you can live off pins and stickers,” Marcela said. “It’s much better if there’s an art community that you’re a member of.”

Moreen Guese (IG: @moyeedoll)

Number of years as a professional artist: Six years
Current work: Full-time advertising art director and freelance artist
Background:
Moreen was born to a family of artists, with both parents being Fine Arts graduates from UST. She was exposed to graphic design at a very young age, growing up with an advertising agency for a family business.
What made you pursue art?
Aside from the family business, Moreen comes from a background in the theater. “My entire life, I’ve been surrounded by really creative people,” she said. “Individuals from so many different types of art like performance art, visual arts.”
What’s the hardest part of being in the industry?
Moreen finds self-doubt to be the greatest hindrance to making art, particularly when it comes to confidence in one’s art style. “It’s always a challenge to stand out in an industry that has so many talented people.” Moreen said.
What would you say to budding artists hoping to enter the industry?
Moreen believes in creating art that stays true to oneself. “Don’t adjust your art style because you think that there’s a certain benta (selling point) to it,” she said. “If you do it for you, eventually, people will love it because it’s you. You put your heart and soul into the artworks that you’ve created. So that’s the most important thing.”

Gabriel Garcia (IG: @gabbytrocious)

Number of years as a professional artist: Five years
Current work: Art Director for an ad agency while freelancing as a comics artist
Background:
Gab, or Fluffi, came from a family of artists. He took up fine arts in college, majoring in painting at UST.
What made you pursue art?
Gab points to cartoons and his uncle, a caricature artist, as his inspirations. Today, Gab does a myriad of commission-based work: branding, graphic design, illustration, motion graphics, and even art direction.
Having recently started making comics, Gab said that his inspiration his art style — “not really manga, not really western”—was Bryan O’Malley, the creator of international hit Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.
What’s the hardest part of being in the industry?
Gab said that it was surprisingly easy for him to break into the local comics industry. Initially pushed by his officemates, Gab said that he fell in love with the medium after attending a convention and experiencing the industry first-hand.
“People are very supporting [in the comics industry] and as for the freelancing, it was hard at first because it was very difficult to find clients who can pay my rate. But once the word got out [it got easier],” he said.
Past the initial growing pains of getting exposure, Gab says the continuing struggles of being a freelance artist are largely the same as those of someone working in advertising: difficult clients.
“It’s currently still happening, I have a client who has a long back-and-forth process with their bosses,” he said. “It’s been three months now and I still have the problem.”
What would you say to budding artists hoping to enter the industry?
“It also takes patience to listen to a client’s dumb revisions,” he said. “It takes patience to learn new crafts like Illustrator, Photoshop. It takes patience to learn anatomy. It really needs patience for everything.”
“Just persevere,” he said. “Don’t give up. Keep on practicing because it gets better as long as you keep doing your craft. Don’t stop doing, it keep getting better.”

Misato Wakatsuki (IG: @misamisatoto)

Number of years as a professional artist: Three years
Current work: Full-time artist
Background:
Misato started out as a freelance artist, leveraging her formal training as an art major from Adventist University of the Philippines. Pressure from friends to find corporate work led her to a communications job at an educational institution. She lasted one year before realizing it just wasn’t for her. She’s been a full-time artist ever since.
What made you pursue art?
As a child, Misato had no idea how to draw. In fact, she admitted to constantly bugging her talented classmates for drawings. After some playful mocking from her classmates about her persistence and lack of talent, Misato’s competitive spirit kicked in.
“Umabot dun sa point na the whole vacation between Grade 5 and Grade 6, nagdo-drawing lang ako, hanggang sa umabot na lang sa point na it became a habit, then nagulat na lang ako, lifestyle ko na siya.” (It came to a point where I was just drawing during the whole vacation between Grade 5 and Grade 6, then it became a habit, then I was surprised that it had become my lifestyle.)”
What challenges do you face in the industry?
Misato acknowledges that the harsh reality of freelancing entails self-discipline and the right attitude, especially because you have to wear many hats. More than just being a creative, you’re an entrepreneur managing a startup of one.
“Ikaw ang PR, ikaw ang HR, ikaw ang ��ܻ徱��… so hindi lang siya yung simpleng ‘Kunin niyo ‘ko as an artist.’ Rather, it’s a lot of tasks combined in one field.” (“You’re PR, you’re HR, you’re the auditor… so it’s not as simple as saying, ‘Hire me as your artist.’ Rather, it’s a lot of tasks combined in one field.)”
What would you say to budding artists hoping to enter the industry?
Misato insists that your price as an artist should always be right, especially if you want to avoid burning out. “Kasi eventually, sige, sugod ka lang, [pero] hindi mo alam na mas mahal pala puwede mong i-presyo sa gawa mo… Dun magsisimula yung mabuburnout ka. Kasi parang ang laki ng effort na ginagawa mo pero napaka-low ng return. Yun yung unang factor na makakawala ng �貹��ǲ�.”
(“Because okay, you can go full speed ahead, but you may not know that you can charge higher for your work… That’s where burnout starts. It’s like you put so much effort but get such a low return. That’s the first factor in losing your �貹��ǲ�.”)

Set yourself up for success: Goal-setting for wellness

��ý — Fri, 12 Oct 2018 06:32:44 +0000

With any grand adventure into the unknown, the smart traveler carries with them a map to guide them to their destination. In business, teams conduct studies and build out strategy plans before launching new projects. When the destination is clear, the path to get there reveals itself. The traveler only needs to take the steps.
Your personal wellness journey is no different.
As a wellness coach, I’ve found that it’s my clients who articulate and commit to certain goals before starting a new workout program that achieve the best results. Most importantly, they appreciate the journey they’ve undertaken.
But is it enough to just list down goals? Often, I hear clients say: “I just want to get healthier” or “I’d want to lose some weight”. Don’t get me wrong, simple, general goals are better than having no goals at all. But to make the process more effective, I like having my clients set their goals following the S.M.A.R.T principle:

Specific,
Measurable,
Achievable,
Relevant,
and Time-bound.

These guidelines make the goal-setting process not just aspirational, but strategic. And it’s just as effective for personal wellness, as it is for pursuing any professional goal.
Let’s go back to one of my examples. “I just want to get healthier.” There as countless ways of measuring health, and even more ways to get healthy. But what path is right for you? Broad goals aren’t helpful. Specific goals call for specific actions, and those are always going to be easier to follow.
So maybe we use the second example, “I’d want to lose some weight.” That’s a bit more specific. A week without rice will likely reflect on the weighing scale. A month of non-stop high intensity interval training will definitely reflect on the weighing scale. But so would simply spending a week without rice. If you’re looking to lose, say, 30 lbs, maybe the no-rice diet won’t cut it.
Always make sure the goals are measurable, as hard data will not only contextualize your program, but motivate you as you chart your progress.
Of course, goals need to be achievable or else the client gives up when the goal is near impossible. If you say your goal is to get strong enough to lift a truck, you’re just setting yourself up for failure. There’s nothing wrong with being optimistic, so long as you keep goals realistic.
But even realistic programs can be difficult. When you get derailed, it takes a lot of motivation to get back on the path. A personally relevant goal will handle that for you. If you’re trying to lose weight so you can finish that 10km company fun run your team is organizing, then you have some skin in the game to keep you motivated.
And when you build a timeframe into your goals, you ensure two things: that you start now and not later, and that the journey you’re embarking on is a sustainable one. If you have three months until that fun run, you know you need to start your endurance training as soon as possible. But also that you aren’t pushing yourself that way forever.

The gun-start program

In Village Fitness, I’ve conceptualized what’s called a Gun-start program, where clients can articulate their ultimate wellness goal and the coaches help them set mini-goals under the four pillars of wellness: Exercise, Nutrition, Supplementation, and Lifestyle.
We also list down three concrete follow-up actions that put the context of time in achieving those goals. Once my client and I are finished with the consultation, I ask them to review the goals they’ve set and sign the document, placing their commitment to fulfilling them. I also sign the document, signaling my commitment to helping them achieve those goals.
Keep in mind that wellness goals vary per individual and that you should take your time in really searching for that deep “Why” that should propel you take the actions that you need to.
Having a personal trainer with experience working with various clients is vital in ensuring you not only build a solid program, but set the right kind of goals for yourself. For some, building up their physique is the end goal, and that’s fine. But as one of my clients once said to me: “The gym is not only for aesthetics but it’s also a place for healing”.
Find your personal wellness goals, define them, make them concrete, and watch how you motivate yourself to do things you never thought you could.

Ryan Fermin is an entrepreneur and fitness professional focusing on sports science, strength training, and conditioning. Find him on Instagram at .

Exercises for the professional on-the-go

��ý — Wed, 26 Sep 2018 06:27:11 +0000

In our fast-paced world, people are constantly finding new ways to make their lives more convenient. Take Honestbee making groceries more accessible, or Grab giving riders on-demand transportation services.
One might argue that this obsession with convenience is making people lazier — and by extension, less active and less healthy. But in reality, fitness doesn’t have to be inconvenient.
In my last article, I wrote about how fitness can make you a more productive worker. Here I’ll be sharing ways to stay fit without cutting down on your workplace productivity.
Whether you’re crunched for time, or have had a strict gym regiment broken up by a sudden business trip, there are always ways to incorporate a good workout into your busy workday.
Here are three workouts for the professional on-the-go — minimal space required, no equipment necessary:
I recommend doing three sets of 30 secs for each exercise. As these are all bodyweight exercises with no additional loads added, it’s important that you approach each set with the mindset of doing as many reps as possible to really get the most out of your workout.

1) Air Squats/Body Weight Squats:

It uses just your body weight to tone and strengthen your quadriceps, glutes, calves, and hamstrings.
Hands can be stretched out in front while the squat movement is being performed.
Advanced version: Putting on a heavy backpack or carrying your suitcase/briefcase overhead is a good way to increase resistance in a pinch.

2) Plank/Side Planks:

A strong core is the foundation for general fitness. Core workouts focus not only on your abdominal muscles, but also your lower back and obliques.
A simple yet effective exercise to workout the core would be the basic plank. Side planks are a variation to focus more on the oblique muscles on your side. Always make sure to keep your neck relaxed, and your core tight throughout.
Advanced version: Raise an arm or a leg, or even both at the same time, for the plank and the side plank.

3) Pushups:

The pushup is a classic exercise for a reason. It’s one of the most effective exercises you can do for your upper body.
While performing a pushup, a person uses his/her own body weight as resistance to target the following muscles: Pectorals, deltoids, triceps, abdominals, and your serratus anterior.
There are many ways to change up this movement depending on the difficulty you want for yourself. If you are still struggling to pull off a full pushup, you can isolate your upper body by resting on your knees and pushing up from there.
Advanced version: I usually aim to do power pushups (clap pushups) where you launch yourself off the ground with each rep. But to be safe, you can increase the reps instead.

These three exercises cover all major muscle groups, and you can do them in your hotel room, your conference room, or even at the airport (especially helpful during layovers between long flights).
And as with any exercise, it’s always best to have your form checked by a licensed trainer. It can be as simple as taking a quick video of yourself doing a few reps and sending it over. That way, we can correct your form and help you avoid injuries wherever you are, whenever you’re working out.

Ryan Fermin is an entrepreneur and fitness professional focusing on sports science, strength training, and conditioning. Find him on Instagram at .

Is your workforce fit for work?

��ý — Thu, 30 Aug 2018 14:41:15 +0000

Struggling to get work done in the office? Having a hard time dealing with unproductive workers? You’re not alone. According to a recent study by US-based research group The Conference Board, the , trailing behind ASEAN neighbors like Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
Whether you’re an employee pushing through low-energy workdays, or an employer trying to figure out how to deal with a seemingly unmotivated team, an unproductive business is an unhappy — and ultimately unsuccessful — one.
Today, there are countless productivity hacks to get you through the workday. Timing strategies like the Pomodoro technique, or new HR practices like forced vacation days have been proven to motivate workers. But ultimately, these are all ways to work around flagging energy levels.
If you really want to fight workplace burnout, the only real strategy is to boost those energy levels. And that’s through exercise.
A recent study out of Briston University found that employees that work out during the workday outperformed those that didn’t across various metrics.
Their respondents scored:

21% higher on concentration,
22% higher on finishing work on time,
were 25% less likely to take unscheduled breaks,
And felt 41% more motivated to work.

Physical activity significantly improves productivity, and workplaces need to take advantage of that. More than just a benefit for employees, fitness programs can vastly improve a business’s baseline.
So how can you build a healthier, more productive workplace? Here are three ways:

#1 – Stop making excuses

People can find an endless number of reasons to avoid incorporating exercise into their work day. “I have a deadline to meet,” or “I’ll just have a light lunch instead,” or “There’s always time after work for exercising.” (Spoiler alert: If you’re already finding excuses not to do it now, you’ll have even more time to find excuses not to do it later.)
Ultimately, it all boils down to how you view exercise. You don’t need to buy a one-year membership in a gym, or join the newest fitness class with your friends. Exercise can be as simple as taking a stroll around the block for five to 10 minutes. (Pro tip: Slowly increasing the intensity as you go also increases the endorphin boost you get afterwards!)

Strength in numbers

Exercising in a group is a great way to make exercise more enjoyable. When overcoming particularly difficult obstacles, you end up developing close relationships with the people you overcome those obstacles with.
Pushing each other to finish that last rep, or to run faster during a race, can really motivate each participant to not only finish the exercise, but improve over time. Not to mention, this is a great way to build camaraderie within the team. If your team learns how to work together properly through a high intensity workout, you can bet they’ll know how to make it through a similarly high-stress situation at the office.
When I ran a circuit-training class for employees from First Source Solutions, it was great seeing them playfully tease each other while they were doing their reps. Having that sense of play while exercising, really gave them a mental release from all the stress they were experiencing during their day.
Another nice takeaway for me was noticing how they motivated each other to start getting serious about their health. Pretty quickly, they were asking me questions on proper nutrition, exercises to do at home, and even recovery tips.

Knowing your ‘why’

Exercise is hard work. It requires dedication, and no small amount of motivation. So even if you have your entire office pushing you along, that focus and determination to get better still needs to come from you.
Having a clear goal in mind — in this case to improve your health and workplace productivity — is essential. When you get lazy to go to the gym or have the temptation to enjoy an extra cheat meal, taking a moment to recenter and go back to your ‘why’ can keep you on the right path.
So what are you waiting for? Get started on your fitness habit today, even with just a 10-minute stroll around the office block. Soon you’ll see amazing results for both your productivity and your health.

Ryan Fermin is an entrepreneur and fitness professional focusing on sports science, strength training, and conditioning. Find him on Instagram at .

How The Lost Bread left the food park and found its footing

��ý — Tue, 21 Aug 2018 08:10:45 +0000

What started out as a test run in the Quezon city’s busy Maginhawa street is now open for franchising. Three years after The Lost Bread first branch in StrEAT Food Park, founders Emil Ongchuan and Patty Marabut are now managing two new locations for the milkshake/brunch concept: one in SM Megamall and their first franchised store in Glorietta 4.
Reflecting on their success, Emil and Patty couldn’t help but be in awe. Two years after the pair launched the The Lost Bread in 2015, they had managed to generate a rocketing five million pesos in total sales.
So how did the team end up with only P14,000 left in their account?
Emil and Patty would soon find out that, while startup success is definitely no small feat, continued growth is a whole other challenge.

Taking the leap

Soon after Emil and Patty graduated from De La Salle University in 2015 — with degrees in Engineering Robotics and Biomedical Engineering, respectively — the two gravitated towards the stability of corporate careers.
In less than four months, however, Patty quit her job to set off on her own. Emil resigned from his shortly after that to join her.
The two shelled out P150,000 each to build a 15 square meter, milkshake-and-brunch stall operating out of what was then a new trend in Metro Manila: a food park.
“We took a gamble,” Patty said. “It started really slow kasi new ‘yung concept ng food park sa Philippines and StrEAT was the first outdoor, family-friendly food park.”
But the gamble paid off when, six months later, the duo broke even — selling an average of around 500 milkshakes a day. Two years later, the business made Emil and Patty five million pesos.
So what’s a successful food startup to do once they’ve made their millions?
Patty and Emil’s entire journey thus far started out with a gamble. It seemed high time for the two to take another one.

No guts, no glory

At first, deciding to open a second branch seemed like a no-brainer. But almost immediately, the reality of what that move entailed set in.
The Lost Bread HQ, their concept for a full service version of their stall, was only a few meters away from their original spot in StrEAT, and it was huge. The standalone spot proved to be too unwieldy. With costs at an all time high, they had to reconfigure the model.
Eventually, they decided that if they were going to venture out of the park, they’d have to go all-in. Pulling out nearly all the money they had saved since opening in 2015, Emil and Patty began the terrifying work of opening their first mall store.
“Nung nag-dip ‘yung bank account namin to P14,000 from five million, tinanong ko sa sarili ko if gusto mag-a-apply na ba ako,” Emil said. “We really had to suck it up.”
Emil and Patty had to step up their game to compete with more experienced competitors. As a new entrant in the retail jungle, they decided to differentiate themselves by turning The Lost Bread into a more immersive customer experience.
Swapping out their interior’s darker palette for lighter hues, Patty revisited The Lost Bread’s branding, starting with their menu offerings and making sure everything stemmed cohesively from there.
“We want to be ‘Instagrammable’”, Patty said. “We want to be experiential, interactive. Lost Bread is all about eating with your eyes, the totality of the experience.”
The rehaul was, of course, a huge investment.
A lot is said about the birthing pains involved with starting a new business. But for the lucky ones who want to build on their initial success, there are still growing pains ahead.
“When we started, I was the cashier and Patty was the barista,” Emil said. “We worked day and night to make it profitable. Now that we’re here, nakaka-pressure. But hopefully we’ll make it work again.”

From food park to franchise

After investing approximately P5 million in their Megamall branch, the duo behind The Lost Bread were strapped into yet another roller coaster of stress and hardship.
“You really have to love what you’re doing,” Patty said. “Sa simula, nandoon ‘yung owners kasi bagong bukas ‘yung business nila. Pero after some time, wala na kasi na-realize nila na it’s not for them.”
“In the end, wala kang choice talaga but to make it work,” she said.
With three branches all around Metro Manila, and plans to expand all the way to Cebu, the team is confident they’ve found their stride.
Just as they did in 2017, the team is ready to take yet another gamble to grow their business. This time: franchising.
“There were a lot of people asking about [franchising] before. But we weren’t ready,” the founders said. “Now, we’ve partnered up with different people to help us build the new business model.”
According to Patty and Emil, those interested in operating a franchise of The Lost Bread can pay an all-in fee of P799,000 for a dessert-only stall.
Emil and Patty are no longer the new kids on the block. And they’ve come a long way since putting it all on the line to open that first stall.
But, according to the pair, their continued success is rooted in the fact that while circumstances have constantly changed, their willingness to risk it all hasn’t.
“Naging successful ‘yung Lost Bread dahil wala na kaming pupuntahan ni Pat,” Emil said. “We had no fall back. It was either make it or break it. We’re glad we took the risk.”

With Art Beat 3, is Tagaytay the next Malasimbo?

��ý — Fri, 08 Jun 2018 06:04:49 +0000

When people from Metro Manila want to escape the heat, the lowest hanging fruit is Tagaytay, which lends itself as a cool, accessible vacation spot over the Taal Volcano. While it’s recently been dotted with al frescos and all-day breakfast diners, the holiday town south of Manila has also been transformed into a haven for music and art enthusiasts.
That’s all thanks to Docdef Productions, which mounts Tagaytay Art Beat: an annual 12-hour music and arts festival featuring local musicians and visual artists. After two successful concerts in 2015 and 2017, Docdef Productions and Museo Orlina produced yet another heart-stopping show this year with 25 bands bannered by Hale, Mayonnaise, Munimuni, Reese Lansangan, Ben&Ben, Autotelic, Tom’s Story, and Clara Benin alongside 20 muralists and exhibitors.
Complementing the overwhelming lineup of artists is Tagaytay Art Beat’s permanent home: an indoor-outdoor museum with an amphitheater parading the glass sculptures of National Artist Ramon Orlina, Museo Orlina.
“We’ve been producing shows since 2012. It’s really a dream for us to have a bigger stage for the bands simply because we know they deserve it. Art Beat is a dream come true for all of us in the team,” said JB Balaquit, founder of Docdef Productions.
Even on its third year, Art Beat still continues to fulfill its promise: bringing fresh ideas and introducing new acts to pull off a one-of-a-kind event.

Support local

When Balaquit envisioned re-creating a Malasimbo-like festival, luck was on his side as Orlina was also interested in producing a show at the museum.
“For the first year, we targeted the locals of Tagaytay. The ticket was only P250 and we had 20 bands. To our surprise, most of the listeners and fans of the bands from Manila travelled to Tagaytay. This gave us a new perspective of what we’re selling,” Balaquit shared.
From P250, the ticket price for Art Beat 2 ballooned to P1,000 apiece while the recently concluded festival had a P2,000 door charge. With the increase, Balaquit’s team was able to invest in inviting more acts and better production equipment.
There might have been negative feedback on the price, but Balaquit embraces the value and purpose of producing the show.
“Dito sa Art Beat, ‘yung mga front acts lang sa ibang concerts, sila ‘yung bida.��We want people to see that our local independent bands can also do it too, that they can be headliners at an out-of-town festival,” Balaquit quipped.
According to Balaquit, an added value to Art Beat is the experience outside the festival, “It’s a location gig. You do this with your barkada to get away from the city; you get to have a road trip. In a way, memories are being created even before they set foot in the Museo.”
While various productions are currently curating events in Manila, Balaquit and his team are now focused on sharing the experience in other places.
“We will have Tagaytay Art Beat 4 again next year and hopefully produce more shows in different cities. Today, that’s the dream,” he said.

This art fundraiser of students for their prof is the nicest tribute

��ý — Mon, 30 Apr 2018 04:54:47 +0000

Love is expressed in various ways. For these students from the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman, love is expressed through a fundraiser meant to help their professor whose bills are piling up in the hospital.
Hosted by the UP Department of Art Studies (DAS), College of Fine Arts (CFA), colleagues from UP Diliman, and the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT), Art for Alice Guillermo is an that’s happening on May 5, 2018, Saturday, from 4 to 8 p.m., at the UP CFA Auditorium.
Professor Guillermo is professor emeritus of DAS where she is also the former chair. She is an esteemed art and social critic with a number of published books on social realist and Philippine arts.
Professor Guillermo went through a complete heart block in 2017 where she was confined in the hospital for two months. A heart pacemaker was mounted to strengthen her health. This year, she suffered an acute intraparenchymal hemorrhage or hemorrhagic stroke and an acute kidney injury: raising her hospitalization and home care expenses.
The Art for Alice fundraiser has three components: an arts raffle with tickets priced at P5,000 each and guarantees an art work prize; an online arts auction; and a lugawan.
For art work donations, contact Flaudette May Datuin at DAS, or Leonilo Doloricon at 0920-254-1589. The drop-off points are the Department of Visual Communication office, CFA at E. Jacinto Street, UP Diliman. Look for Ms. Jane M. For DAS, it is at Pav 1122 (Palma Hall Annex) along Quirino Avenue, opposite NSRI. Look for Hans.
Works by artists Francis M. Verano, Leonilo Doloricon, Con Cabrera, Iggy Rodriguez, Vincent Coronel, Joe Datuin, Ambie Abano, Raul Lebajo, Irma Lacorte, Aba Dalena, Tednicalao Dimaporo Camahalan, Jun Vinculado, and Kelly Ramos, among others, have been donated and received for the online auction and arts raffle.
For arts raffle ticket, contact Janette or SC at the UP Film Institute at 981-8500 loc 2670. For the Lugawan for Alice, spearheaded by ACT, tickets are sold for P500 and P1,000. For tickets, contact Zenie Lao-Santos 0919-868-8154.
For the online auction, click to bid.
For those who wish to donate cash or purchase tickets through bank transfer payments, here are the banking details: DAS bank account is Landbank of the Philippines 3071-0412-70, with account names as Flaudette May Datuin and Cherryl Navida; ACT-Alliance of Concerned Teachers, Incorporated is at PNB UP Diliman Branch, Savings Account No. 393062600015. Send the scanned copy of your bank deposit slip to roland.tolentino@gmail.com.
For more details of the Art for Alice fundraiser, go to the on Facebook.

Chocolate and cheese: your new favorite pairing

��ý — Sat, 21 Apr 2018 15:53:08 +0000

“Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese,” wrote G.K. Chesterton in Alarms and Discursions, in an entire chapter dedicated to the pressed curd foodstuff. He goes on talking about how poets never write about cheese at length, despite the word having “every quality which we require in exalted poetry:” it is a “short, strong word,” that “rhymes to ‘breeze’ and ‘seas’.”

It’s a pity that G.K. Chesterton, who died in 1936, will never be able to see the day cheese takes a step closer to being romanticized. In particular, its pairing with chocolate: the quintessential food item associated with love.

Joe Baird, cheese expert and consultant for dairy organizations in America, heralded this during his recent trip to Manila last week when the California Milk Advisory Board, which represents California’s more than 1,300 dairy farm families held a tasting event. California, after all, produces 2.4 billion pounds of cheese and over 250 varieties and styles.

Cheese and chocolate, he says, is a pairing that enjoys great attention in California, ever since the trend began about eight to 10 years ago. “Cheese has different levels of strength, same with chocolate,” he says. “Cheese is made of one ingredient or multiple ingredients. Same with chocolate, which is primarily composed of the cacao bean.”

Bars with high percentages of chocolate, he added, go great with blue cheeses because they balance each other out. The younger chocolates, meanwhile, go with the younger cheese. “It’s a great marriage for each other,” he notes. “It’s sweet and salty.”

Art Samantha Gonzales

And indeed, the pairing is heavenly. The experience begins when you snap a thin bar of chocolate. Depending on the amount and quality of cocoa butter, as well as how finely ground the chocolate particles are, the snap will will be either gentle or firm. Put it in your mouth and it begins to melt: smooth, creamy, and perhaps with a little nutty feel.

Then, the cheese. You might think the two would contrast each other—the former being associated with desserts, and the latter having a more pronounced salty taste. The cheese is relatively softer, chewier, and even gummier, which cuts through chocolate’s sweetness.

But once its highly complex taste—sweet, sharp, grassy, nutty, spicy, acidic, fruity, bitter—travels around the mouth, its creaminess melts with the creaminess of chocolate. Like two lovers who have gone around the world searching for their one true pairing, the formerly polar opposites embrace each other.

“Cheese is addictive. There’s nothing else like it,” Baird said. “You can have a bottle of wine, a winemaker will put a label on it, and then they will sell it with attention to the label,” he added. “But if you see a big wheel of cheese, even without a label, it’s already impressive.” The same logic, perhaps, can be applied to chocolate.

Perhaps we owe this discovery to millennials. With 90% of California dairy farms being family-owned, millennial descendants are slowly taking over the business.

“They grew up in a more artistic generation and they also grew up eating these specialty cheeses as food for entertainment,” Baird said. “Social media is a huge way of finding what’s popular. The millennial generation has started eating better than people in their 40’s. For those taking over the business, sky’s the limit. They’re creating new things and following what’s trending as well.”

But at the end of the day, no matter what the internet says, “it’s the way you taste the cheese, what you think it tastes like,” Baird says. Like love, finding solace in the pairing of cheese and chocolate may be a bit like finding a match in an unlikely place: there’s nothing else like it.

California dairy products, with the Real California Milk seal, are available in leading supermarkets such as S&R, Robinsons Supermarket and SM.

Podcasts to help you keep a healthy mind

��ý — Fri, 20 Apr 2018 04:00:58 +0000

The work day is over and you just want to get home. But traffic is a killer and the MRT is jam-packed. You need something to keep you from turning into a seething ball of rage, but you’re afraid of pulling out your phone to play games or read an e-book because someone might snatch it for you. And you’ve grown tired of listening to the same songs play in the Top 50 Charts for the nth time.
That, my friend, is what podcasts are for. Here are some podcasts to listen to (all of them available on Spotify) to get through your stressful trip while lowering your stress levels.

This podcast is a great place to start in looking for things to listen to depending on what part of your life you want to improve. It’s a sampler of episodes from different podcasts—tackling both physical and mental health improvement—and links to them if you want to listen to more.

Dr. Ellen Henderiksen answers questions about psychology and mental health in bite-sized 10- to 20-minute episodes. From ways to take care of yourself to ways of dealing with other people, Dr. Henderiksen talks about these issues in an approachable and candid manner. And if that’s not enough, you can get free exercises and resources from her website. The Mountains to Molehills Challenge is definitely worth a try.

Self-affirmations may seem cheesy when you start, but there are many people who attest to the effectivity of being your own cheerleader. Admittedly, saying the same one sentence to yourself over and over again can get tiresome and that’s where this podcast comes in. Let the soothing voice of Josie Ong guide you through five minutes of self-care and self-belief. The great thing about this podcast is that you don’t have to listen to it sequentially. Select the episode that you need for you, listen to it, reflect on it, and maybe download it legally using your podcast app of choice for future use.

As the old adage goes, “comedy comes from a dark place,” and perhaps a testament to that is the tragic loss of renowned actor and comedian Robin Williams. In this podcast, stand-up comedians talk about their own personal struggles with mental illness, how they draw strength from it, and how they prevent it from controlling their lives.

There’s this old Native American tale, and maybe you’ve heard about it before, about how each person has two wolves—a good wolf and a bad wolf—and they’re in a constant battle against each other. And the one who wins is the one that you feed the most. The One You Feed is a podcast about feeding your good wolf, through inspiring interviews with people from different fields on how they keep themselves mentally healthy despite everything life throws at them.

The Bright Sessions is an audio drama about Dr. Bright, a psychologist offering “therapy for the strange and unusual” to individuals with psychic powers—atypicals as the show calls them. Among her roster of patients are Sam, a time traveller whose abilities are triggered by her anxiety attacks, Caleb, a teenage jock who deals with his increased empathy through football, and Chloe, an artist who claims that she can hear the voices of angels. The patients are unique but relatable, and it’s nice to get the side of a psychologist as someone who’s capable of doing her job and showing genuine care for her patients. The show is written by Lauren Shippen (who voices Sam), hand-in-hand with Elizabeth Laird (who voices Dr. Brigh’s secretary) as the show’s psychological consultant.

The internet can be a very toxic place. And sometimes it’s just super tempting to fight with the people who have sent you hateful comments online. In Conversations with People Who Hate Me, internet content creator and social justice advocate Dylan Marron contacts the people who have sent him such comments to see their side of the story without devolving into heated arguments. This podcast is produced by Night Vale Presents, which also produces the popular surrealist audio drama Welcome to Night Vale (where Marron voices Carlos the Scientist).
Do you have more podcast recs? Hit us up on , , and . We really want to know.

Bandwagon's Clarence Chan on music, business and the future

��ý — Mon, 16 Apr 2018 12:22:16 +0000

Bandwagon is the place to go when you’re looking for the latest news, reviews and gig schedules in the Singapore, the Philippines and Indonesia. Having been in operations in the Philippines for three years already, the website’s Facebook page has almost 20,000 avid followers who rely on the platform for the latest in indie and mainstream music in the region.
Bandwagon’s founder, Clarence Chan, started his company due to a lifelong love for music, his business background, and need to prove that you can make a living from doing what you love. The 32 year old doesn’t come across as your typical CEO, wearing the same Bandwagon shirt as his other employees, cropped jeans, colorful socks and casual sneakers and introducing himself by his first name to journalists and concert goers alike during the daylong celebration of Bandwagon’s third year of operations in the Philippines last March 17. You wouldn’t guess he was the reason you’ve all been gathered to a secret location at four in the afternoon.
SparkUp was able to interview Chan at the back of a pick-up truck parked outside Treskul Records, a vinyl shop and bar, where artists Six the North Star and The Diegos spinned funk and Manila Sound for the music fans who attended the Bandwagon Hush event that afternoon. Chan spoke freely about his business, its expansion in Southeast Asia, and his predictions for the future of the Philippine music scene.
Can you introduce yourself to our SparkUp readers?
Hi, I’m Clarence. I’m the founder of Bandwagon. We’re in our 7th year of business. We started Bandwagon to connect people to music. Right now our goal is really to be the voice for music in Asia.
I studied in Singapore from a regular schooling track and I love music. I started to play the organ when I was three, then I went to the piano then the violin. I went to the Berkeley College of Music for a summer just to realize if I should pursue music as a degree. I’ve always wanted to be in a music space but at the same time I’ve always had a knack for business, in solving problems, in taking risks, bringing new value. I like the challenge of bringing together people working toward a common vision. That’s essentially how Bandwagon started.
I asked myself at the end of uni–I finished with first class honors so I could have gone to a bank or a financial institution–but I asked myself if I could get any job in the world what would it be? And my answer was to start Bandwagon. I really wanted to make a difference in a space that I love and not too many people were doing it. Especially in Singapore where music at that time still had a stigma. People still found that “oh no, you can’t have a viable career from it” and that made me want to try and change things and show the next generation that it’s possible to do what you love and make a living from it.
When I knew that I wanted to be in a music business I was working for a company that distributed musical instruments. I went to MTV as well as an intern. That kind of gave me a basic background and I just went from there.
How did Bandwagon start and why did it expand from Singapore to the Philippines and Indonesia?
I grew up in Singapore and I used to go to a lot of gigs. For me it was tough to track what was going on so in 2011 I decided that with the internet gaining traction I decided to move all these information on the internet so people will be able to find out what different indie collectives are doing in the music scene. It just began as a personal project of mine trying to scratch my own itch and then it just evolved.
Camille [Castillo] who is our current country manager [in the Philippines], we met because I used to see this girl who’s always retweeting our content. She’s one of our most enthusiastic readers so I figured that I wanted to get to know her and find out more about her interests. We got to know each other quite well and we said hey why don’t we do a similar thing in the Philippines. We started to feature a lot of local artist who are creating original music, we started to recommend gigs to people, to give them a dependable site that’s extensive, that covers different genres, and will allow them to find good gigs.
Indonesia was kind of nearby Singapore and I saw a lot of potential in the market. There are a lot of people and music there. More and more concerts are happening, they have a lot of good festivals… this is some of the reasons we started to go in.
How has Bandwagon grown in these past seven years?
We started very humbly. When I started Bandwagon it was just a gig listing/directory. It wasn’t getting a lot of views. I guess I thought there was many people like myself, but maybe there wasn’t so much. So what we did was we started a blog to allow us to talk more about the music we were listing on our directory. And that actually opened up a lot of opportunities. When we came up there weren’t a lot of sites that would write about music videos, new single releases by artists, and review and feature some of the more indie and underground shows. We were the ones to cover and give publicity to these gigs. That helped us to gain traction among the artists. I’d like to say that we grew very organically. We never really spent a lot of money on marketing or anything. Our figures are all organic. We just tried to do our best to give more authentic content. We made friends in the community. That’s how we’ve grown over the years.
And as we started to get more and more serious we started looking into how we can strategize the kind of content that we put out in terms of how many percent international and how many percent regional, how many percent are local. We started to look at the kind of articles that we put out as news, features, gigs, reviews. So how do we apportion that.
We started coming out with a proper strategy and that has seen us double our page views the past year. Last year we doubled the previous year. So we’ve been growing 100-130% every year.
Aside from having a separate landing page for the bandwagon.asia website depending on your country location, how do you specialize content in the countries you operate in?
We have dedicated writers in each region. That’s definitely a lot harder to do because you’ve got to find different writers in different countries. You’ve got to vet. You have to work with them across borders. So it’s definitely more challenging but it’s also something that we believe in. We feel that in the market when they know you’re the best then you actually meet the bands, the artists, the labels, the artist’s managers. You’re able to talk about it in a very relatable and very accurate and authentic fashion. That’s something from the early stage that we identified. It hasn’t been easy to find good writers for us. We want to be the site that’s known for high quality music journalism. We do have some high standards. So it hasn’t been easy looking. But once we found these writers we work with them at a regional level. We have an editor from Singapore who really looks at them and we have a country manager in each country to ensure that there’s good content and that we’re prioritizing the right kind of artist and music to write about.
Is there a significant difference in musical taste between countries? Any upcoming musical trends?
There’s definitely a difference but it’s hard to speak in general terms because music can be so personal. At the same time I noticed a regional trend and that is the growth of indie music, that’s one. I think that with Bandcamp, SoundCloud and even Bandwagon, indie artists who may not have a major label’s backing will be able to come forward with their music often with interesting genres. Like in Singapore the first band to play in Glastonbury was a grindcore band. Niche genres like that.
In the Philippines we’ve been able to feature a lot of independent producers. We’ve been able to push bands out like She’s Only Sixteen and Taken by Cars. We see a trend towards these and an increase of trend in festivals like Laneway Festival, We the Fans, Wanderlast Festival here in Manila. All these are very telltale signs of interest in “niche” genres that ten years ago were considered niche. Now we are seeing more young people take to genres like these and exploring more niche music which we think is great. There is more diversity today. I think it’s very positive.
The second trend that I think we definitely see is EDM–electronic dance music. We see a lot of new festivals pop up, for example Ultra Music Festival. We start to see really a huge draw to festivals like these. These are general trends that we’ve been seeing.
What is the role of social media in being able to find new artists?
We think social media is huge. In some sense artists have their own platforms to push out their own music. Even if they haven‘t been able to get in touch with a media platform, just through their own social network and their friends, just by making good music, they are able to get the word out there. In Singapore we’ve seen artists who’ve ended up getting a 360 deal just by posting YouTube videos from their own bedroom like Gentle Bones which recently packed out a concert two nights in a row. That’s about 3,000 people paying for a concert in the premier arts venue in Singapore. He started with just YouTube videos. Then through social media people comment on it and share it. Even from the US, people were covering his songs.
We’re starting to see the power of the internet, the power of social media. That’s why in Bandwagon we’re really trying to stay current and relevant by listening to what our readers want. For example in our Birthday Brunch Party [on March 17] you’ve seen that an artist, Coeli, requested over twitter that she hopes we’ll have more brunch gigs. And we’ll look into having more events like that.
We listen on social media as a way to get information. And we utilize our event capabilities, our relationship with artists and our media platform to market it to organize shows. That’s one example of listening to the market and offering to people new experiences. They may come for the experience but they stay and discover music.That’s the goal for us.

BandWagon started its anniversary celebration at Frank & Dean with music from acoustic indie acts Coeli, Nikki Colet, and Leanne And Naara’s, journeyed to Treskul with kalimba music from Bea Lorenzo, and capped it off with a concert at 12 Monkeys, Ortigas featuring December Avenue, Twin Lobster, Pedicab, Kjwan and The Morning Episodes.
Bandwagon, as well as other performers and artists, will be back for this May.

Workout habits of startup founders

��ý — Fri, 06 Apr 2018 10:23:44 +0000

Most of us founders are so driven that we never want to stop working,” Ia Hernandez, founder of health startup FitAcess, said in a forum in Makati City last January. “We just want to work on our business all day. But what good is success if you’re not healthy enough to enjoy it?”
Working out, Hernandez said, is beneficial for startup founders as it boosts a person’s productivity by 12%.
“Imagine the extra work that you can do with that extra boost,” she added. “Working out is scientifically proven to make you happier. It combats anxiety, it combats depression, and it gives you a general sense of well being.”
Her advice for startup founders: “List down all the things you do in a day, then see how many hours you spend to do them. After that, reassess what gives value to your personal development and adds value to your startup development, then take away all the unnecessary things. Use those extra hours for physical activities.”
Here are three ways to maintain a good workout habit, according to Hernandez:

Move more.

Start each day by telling your body that you have to move more. When you do so, your body will most likely get into it.
Easy ways to follow this include walking around the office, taking the stairs, and walking over to colleagues instead of sending emails.

Treat your workout as a regular schedule or meeting

Allot even as little as 15 to 30 minutes to work out and commit to it. Startup founders should be as committed to their workout plans as they are committed to their clients or investors.

Work out with a group

Working with other people from the company can help startup founders to cultivate a healthy culture in the team. It’s more motivating to workout with colleagues, interns and employees. It’s also a chance to bond with the whole group.

A guide to the Silicon Valley diet craze called 5:2

��ý — Thu, 05 Apr 2018 07:02:39 +0000

Among the diet plans gaining a momentum in the tech startup scene is intermittent fasting (IF).

According to an article by The Guardian, in Silicon Valley, a growing number of tech startup executives are following the IF pattern called “5:2” claiming that it helps them lose weight, manage mood swings, and improve productivity.

Its proponent, British doctor Michael Mosley recently sat down with SparkUp to talk about the method he popularized. The first thing he clarified is that the plan does not only help people to lose weight—it also has benefits for the human brain.

“There is a science behind it that’s why it is very beneficial to the brain,” Mosley said during the media launch of the new installation of his TV show “Trust Me I’m a Doctor” on March 23 in Makati City.

According to him, it “somehow works the same way as exercise. It’s stressful initially, then the stress leads to the release in the brain of a particular type of hormone called Brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which strengthens existing brain cells and encourages them to grow new brain cells.

In the 5:2 plan, you get five days of normal eating (with “little thought to calorie control and a slice of pie for pudding if that’s what you want”). On the other two days, you reduce your calorie intake to 500 calories if you’re a woman, and 600 calories if you’re a man.

The computation is based on the idea that women need 2000 calories and men need 2400 calories per day. Thus, on a fast day, one should eat a quarter of a normal day’s recommended calories.

However, Mosley said people should not depend on 5:2 plan alone but should also complement their routines with regular exercise.

Three simple drills should be in one’s daily exercise, he says: aerobic bike run, muscle-building, and balancing.

“I also encourage people to do short burst of tough exercises as short as 20-second burst because it seems to haver similar benefits, but working by a different mechanism,” he said.

In “Trust Me I’m a Doctor,” Mosley investigates the latest evidence behind health claims and headlines – for instance, whether sugar is really the new tobacco, how much is too much alcohol and whether we should worry about air pollution. He has also set up big experiments looking at the benefits of eating oily fish, whether cooking with turmeric can help prevent cancer and how to increase our levels of vitamin D. It premieres in Asia this April 2018 on BBC Earth. BBC Earth is available exclusively on Cignal TV.��

Learn about Philippine architecture with iMake History Fortress

��ý — Tue, 27 Mar 2018 04:00:42 +0000

Brick on top of brick. It could describe the fortresses in Intramuros, or playing with LEGOs.

At the iMake History Fortress at Baluarte de Santa Barbara at Fort Santiago, you can enjoy both at the same time. Intramuros Administration, in collaboration with the Embassy of Denmark and Felta Multimedia, Inc., the exclusive partner of LEGO Education in the Philippines, turned what was once a dungeon for Filipino dissidents into a learning hub for architecture.

Using LEGOs, artists and students made scale models of exemplary Filipino‑Spanish buildings, some which were not able to stand the ravages of time. There are also examples of LEGO robotics, like a spinning windmill and a life‑sized Philippine eagle that can extend its seven‑foot wingspan. There’s also a hub where you can create LEGO buildings of your own, with sample patterns like the National Museum and the Manila Central Post Office.

Architecture students from the University of Santo Tomas won first place and most innovative at the iMake History Fortress Architecture Scale Model Competition, with their scale model of the Lourdes Church. Also known as the National Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes, the original church structure that once housed two sculptures of the Virgin Mary was not able to withstand the bombings of Intramuros during World War II. Using the blueprints provided to them by Felta, UST students were able to make a 1:100 scale model of the old church structure. Their model, along the other top ten entries, will be on permanent display at lower floor of the iMake History Fortress.

“LEGO is a good tool for learning history and architecture,” said Emman Estevan, part of the UST team that created the Lourdes Church model, during an interview with SparkUp at the iMake History Fortress preview last March 19. “In other countries they’re already use LEGOs to visualize structures. Here in the Philippines it’s not being fully integrated in the architecture curriculum probably because LEGOs are expensive here.”

It took Estevan and his team a week of planning and a combined 48 hours of work to build the scale model. Then they had to make a two minute video to go with their work to submit to the contest. He looks forward to using LEGO again in future projects. “At first it was hard, but as we progressed we understood the pattern and it made it easier for us to work.”

LEGOs can be an important tool in learning architecture and architecture, said LEGO Education regional manager for Southeast Asia Brian Dam. “LEGO is a very good way of letting your creativity go and building things that you’ve seen in real life,” Dam told SparkUp. “I think combining that with the teaching of history is a strong combination.”

For the LEGO executive, creativity can save the world. “I believe that creativity is key and not to sound apocalyptic, but if we are to survive as a species we need to think creatively,” said Dam. “We have limited oil, we have limited resources in general so we need to be creative and find solutions to maintain and develop, otherwise it will go in another way that we don’t like.”

Your itinerary for Visita Iglesia in Intramuros

��ý — Mon, 26 Mar 2018 04:00:50 +0000

Lent is an important time for our primarily Catholic nation, and Manila residents need not go far to take part in the tradition of Visita Iglesia.

Part of the Department of Tourism’s thrust towards faith tourism is a partnership with the Intramuros Administration where the old center of Manila will take center stage: this year’s Lenten activities will take place amid baroque churches and fortified bulwarks.

Seven churches in Intramuros will serve as stops for Maundy Thursday (March 29)’s Visita Iglesia, and will be open to the public from 8 in the morning to midnight. This is the first time that these churches will all be open to the public since World War II, allowing us to follow the footsteps of our Spanish era ancestors.

The seven churches are:

The Manila Cathedral

Built in 1571 at the center of Intramuros, the episcopascal seat of the Manila Achbishop has hosted three papal visits: Pope Paul VI, Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis.

San Agustin Church

This Baroque church was designated as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1993, and is one of the oldest churches in the Philippines.

San Ignacio Church

Photo Wikipedia

This Jesuit church was completed in 1899, and houses the Museo de Intramuros.

Guadalupe Shrine

This small shrine is located inside Fort Santiago, where national hero Jose Rizal spent his last days.

Knights of Columbus Fr. Willmann Church

Located inside the Knights of Columbus building, the church is named after the first district deputy of the organization in the Philippines of this Catholic fraternal service organization.

Lyceum of the Philippines University Chapel

This chapel is seated within the Lyceum of the Philippines University Manila campus, a school founded by Dr. Jose P. Laurel, who eventually became the Philippines’ third president.

Mapua University Chapel

Photo Wikipedia

This chapel is seated within the Mapua University campus, and manages to keep its old school charm in a school known for its information technology courses.

Other activities

General Luna Street will also be the site for the Via Crucis, more commonly known as the Stations of the Cross, from Maundy Thursday to Black Saturday (March 31). Follow the last days and sacrifice of Jesus Christ with images that were supplied by the San Agustin Museum through the Vatican II‑sanctioned New Way of the Cross.

Martir sa Golgota, a modern take on the classic Cenaculo plays, will also be staged along General Luna street, in front of Palacio del Gobernador, by the Tanghalang Sta. Ana, and directed by seasoned performer and Tanghalan president Lou Veloso. Catch the play at 7:30 p.m. on Maundy Thursday.

The Department of Tourism estimates that there will be at least 500,000 local and foreign tourists on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. To facilitate traffic within Intramuros, General Luna will be closed to traffic, while there will be ten parking areas provided to the public. There will also be guards, water stations and vending sites stationed along the way. The Red Cross van is stationed in front of the Manila Cathedral, at Plaza Roma. There are portalets stationed at the Manila Cathedral and San Agustin Church.

Opening up Intramuros for Lenten activities is only a part of the DoT’s endorsement of faith tourism. With our rich history steeped in folk Catholicism, pre-colonial beliefs, Islam, and various practices taken from trade with nearby nations, our country has a lot to offer when it comes to the fascinating topic of religion and belief.-LDG

The business of microcinemas

��ý — Thu, 22 Feb 2018 19:30:06 +0000

There was a time when sound in cinema was unheard of and colored moving pictures were the stuff of dreams. But now, the cinema is accessible in the nearest mall, with tickets being sold at an affordable price, plus extra features like popcorn, 3‑D glasses, a slew of movie previews, and memorable end‑credits that will keep you glued to your seats.

But while cinemas have become accessible, some award‑winning movies haven’t. And it isn’t because the so‑called art snobs feel like their work is too good for the masses. It’s because cinemas operate more as a business and less like an art display. The number of days given to a film’s showing depends on how many people come to see it during its first few days.

It’s the reason why crowd favorites like blockbuster films or mainstream Tagalog movies luxuriate for two or more weeks in the cinema, while the more obscure indie films, no matter how many local and international awards they win, might enjoy a little more than three days in a mall theater. Even , which won Best Film in the 2017 Cinemalaya Awards and uses the very popular art of hip‑hop as a tableau for tackling the effects of living in a dictatorship (such a timely topic), had to take to social media guerilla marketing to get mall cinemas not take the film out of theaters.

In the same vein, 28‑year‑old filmmaker Hector Barreto Calma, who himself has graced international festivals for films like Ang mga Alingawngaw sa Panahon ng Pagpapasaya, used social media to gauge whether or not he would have a niche for the kind of cinema he wanted to put up. Soon enough, he founded Cinema Centenario: a microcinema along busy Maginhawa Street in Quezon City, flanked by food establishments that draw university students.

In here, a narrow staircase leads to a room filled with glass walls, providing a full view of movie schedules, memorabilia (last January, it featured costumes from 2017 Metro Manila Film Festival Best Picture Ang Larawan), an old‑fashioned red ticket booth, and a flatscreen television were trailers—ranging from classic to contemporary—loop endlessly.

ALTERNATE SPACE

Cinema Centenario regularly shows local and indie films from noon to midnight, has a seating capacity of 65 people, and an affordable ticket price of ₱200. They also sell snacks and film merchandise.Cinema Centenario was launched in December 2017, the year that marked the 100th year of Philippine cinema.

“When I read a thread about an indie movie on social media, I always find people asking where they can watch the film,” said Calma in an interview with SparkUp when asked about whether or not there’s a need for microcinemas. “That’s why there was a need to make an alternate space to show films. We schedule a film for showing, and regardless of whether or not we get a full audience, we don’t pull‑out the film from it’s scheduled viewing.”

Films were made to be shown on cinemas, not on your mobile phone.

—Hector Barreto Calma, filmmaker

Social media is also where Cinema Centenario does most of its marketing. Every new showing is a new Facebook event, sometimes promising the chance for the audience to talk with movie directors and actors after the film.

“The audience tends to put filmmakers and actors on a pedestal. We want to make them reachable,” said Calma. “We schedule with directors and actors and announce our events when we’re sure that they can come. We’re bridging the gap between the audience and the filmmaker. They can ask their questions, facets about the movie are revealed, and this is something that you can’t experience in other cinemas.”

“With the age of technology, you can watch your favorite movie on a laptop, but iba pa rin ang sinehan (it’s still different in the cinema),” Calma added, looking up wistfully at the soundless black‑and‑white movie trailer playing on the television at the cinema lobby, his hands clasped as if in prayer. “You get a collective reaction with the strangers you’re watching with that you can’t replicate anywhere else. Films were made to be shown on cinemas, not on your mobile phone.”

But with their location in Maginhawa comes a captive audience of young and old alike. Some of them, Calma joked, were a literal captive audience trapped by rush‑hour traffic who decided to park their cars nearby and spend two hours or so watching a movie instead of spending those hours stressed out. Some others come up to the cinema expecting another trendy theme restaurant. “How cute,” he recalled one of them say. “Look, their menu is themed after movies!” Cinema Centenario get students from nearby universities like the University of the Philippines, Ateneo de Manila University and Miriam College, who come after class. Calma also recalled with great fondness an elderly couple who lived nearby. They decided to climb the steep staircase up to the cinema after weeks of passing by it curiously during their daily walks to watch a movie that was first shown when they were still teenagers. They insisted on meeting Calma afterwards to shake his hand and thank him.

Cinema Centenario sources its movies from Calma’s connections with other indie filmmakers and from the restored classics collection of ABS‑CBN’s film restoration project.

Cinema Centenario is located at 95 Maginhawa St., Quezon City. It is open daily from 11:30 a.m. to 12 midnight. Check out their for screening schedules.

‘NOT A FAD’

Similarly, Black Maria Cinema in Mandaluyong City is an offshoot of a company that works on post‑film production, SQ Film Laboratory, and is located in the residential district of Mandaluyong City.

The microcinema is also connected to Santiago’s, a café that’s decorated with pink flamingos and smells of buttery pastries and strong coffee.

This is where SparkUp sat down with Shandii Bacolod: film director, producer and talent manager, and currently the programming head of Black Maria.

“Is it just a fad?” Bacolod asked rhetorically over a cup of black coffee. “No, it’s not. Microcinemas stem from the unconscious need to preserve our own art.”

“They said that the film industry is dying, but it’s not,” he continued empathically. “It’s deprived. It’s deprived of venues, resources, and government funds. As a part of this industry, we’re the ones who have to come up with a solution.”

The idea to have a microcinema came from one of the producers that they were working with in SQ, he recalled, who pointed out that they already have all the equipment they need to show films anyway. In November 2017, Black Maria Cinema was borne out of the 30‑seater cinema that used to only have filmmakers screening their work for final touches as its audience. Because they already had all the equipment, like a digital projector and Dolby Digital sound, and the connections within the film industry, all they needed was an audience.

“Our major audience are film enthusiasts and film buffs,” said Bacolod. “Dinadayo nila kami (They make the trip here).” Their location in Mandaluyong, a stone’s throw away from busy Shaw Boulevard, also makes them accessible to people who want someone else to relax after office hours, walk‑ins from the local community, and of course millennials and students who have heard about them on social media. Social media, it seems, is also an integral part of any microcinema’s marketing plan. Black Maria Cinema closed temporarily in January to update its sound system and seats, and went back in operations on the first week of February.

Unlike Cinema Centenario, Black Maria Cinema also shows foreign films like I, Tonya—a 2017 film about ‘90s figure skater Tonya Harding who was made notorious by her alleged attack of her rival Nancy Kerrigan—and Loving Vincent—a 2017 animated film rendered in the art style of Vincent van Gogh whose life is the subject of the film. They charge ₱200 for local films and ₱230 for foreign films, following the pricing of mall cinemas. “But if the movie is a part of a film festival then we follow the price given by the festival,” Bacolod added.

Former Black Maria Cinema‑goers might be shocked by this ₱50 increase in ticket prices from when it first started, but it seems like a necessary price increase. While microcinemas operate with obviously less resources and space compared to mall cinemas, they are subject to the same regulations.

“Kahit maliit kami (even if we’re small) we have to follow all the requirements and criteria as big mall cinemas, and we pay the same amount in fees,” Bacolod disclosed. These include zoning permits, fire compliance permits, business permits and registering with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Bureau of Internal Revenue. She estimates that Black Maria Cinema has a ₱35,000‑₱45,000 monthly operating cost.

With more and more microcinemas being established in the last few months, there might soon be enough to come up with an association of microcinema owners so that they may discuss how to make their businesses sustainable. “This year business owners are coming up to improve operations, how to strengthen our business, how to promote our movies,” said Bacolod.

“So that microcinemas won’t be considered an alternate venue to watch films anymore,” he reflected. “We’ll be known as the��Գܱ�.”

Black Maria Cinema is located at 779 San Rafael St., SQ Film Laboratories Building, Plainview, Mandaluyong. Check out their for screening schedules.��

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A gastronomic journey through Binondo, curated by a startup

��ý — Tue, 13 Feb 2018 07:38:48 +0000

There’s something romantic and utterly peculiar about roaming the streets of Binondo, the oldest Chinatown in Asia. Rows of dimly lit stores are crammed with its own little secrets: the confluence of old and new in the form of bottled herbal remedies, charms, beaded jewelry, golden Buddhas, and, the best part of all: traditional Chinese food.

After all, who could resist the charm of, say, dumplings: thin dough crescents filled with minced meat and chopped vegetables, then boiled until soft and chewy? Or spring rolls: fresh vegetables and meat rolled into cylinders and dipped in sweet nutty sauce?

That’s why when digital booking platform Tralulu began offering pre‑curated trips—a shift from its original business model that connected users to local guides—it was only logical that a “food crawl” in Binondo was the first on the list. The 400‑year‑old town, sandwiched between the historic districts of Sta. Cruz and Intramuros in Manila, after all is close to the heart of the tech startup’s Filipino‑Chinese Founder and CEO Andrew Cua who grew up and still lives in the area.

“This is very personal,” 23‑year‑old Cua told SparkUp in an interview. “I’ve been bringing people around Binondo for food trips for around five to six years now. Since college, I’ve been doing that.”

Binondo is the Mecca for Filipinos looking for authentic oriental cuisines, with different Chinese restaurants located in every corner. Despite the mushrooming of new and quaint food establishments around the area, these restaurants have withstood the test of time and remain serving savory Chinese dishes to different generations of Filipinos.

“ The great taste of the food is uncontested and the landscape of restaurant business here is very competitive,” he said. “Before there were fast‑food chains set up here, but most of them didn’t survive, they lost to traditional businesses.”

Binondo’s food establishments, he added, are part of long tradition and cultural fusion, which Tralulu seeks to highlight on the trip.

“It’s a gastronomic journey where people can try the hidden gems and the best food stops in Binondo, especially during the month of February,” he said, adding that the trip, called “Binondo Food Crawl,” is perfect for people visiting the town during the Chinese new year season. In February last year, Cua said, around 80 local and foreign travellers booked the trip on the platform.

The four‑to‑five trip can be availed for ₱1,200, which already includes fees for the food and a guide.

“We partner closely with restaurant owners to provide sometimes even hidden recipes that people don’t have access to, and also the stories behind a recipe, a shop, and the town—what makes it what it is.”

Here’s a glimpse of what you can experience:

The food crawl includes five “stations” where users can get a complete Chinese meal—from appetizers to desserts.

It begins with a visit to New Po‑Heng Lumpia House, a shop located in a latent residential building at Quintin Paredes Street, where travellers will get to eat Chinese‑style fresh lumpia, a popular snack made of mixed of vegetable and spices rolled in a thin crepe pastry skin.

“This one is usually the favorite of everyone which cuts across kids to the elders because of the traditional Hokkien recipe,” he said. “Poheng Lumpia House is a hidden gem run by a Hokkien migrant who came to the Philippines few decades ago to start a Hokkien shop in a secret residencial place.”

Travellers are given the option to make their own fresh lumpia.

What’s a Binondo trip without devouring what is probably the most popular Chinese food—dimsum?

At the next station of the trip, Tralulu takes travellers to Ying Ying Tea House at Dasmarinas Street where “the tastiest dimsum in town” are served.

“There’s always a debate about which shop has the best dimsum in Binondo, and some locals would conclude the debate and say that Ying Ying has the best dimsum with its years of experience,” he said.

No one can go wrong with Ying Ying’s dimsum, he said. After all the family that runs the business are also the one behind some of the most popular food establishments in Binondo like The President Grand Palace and Wai Ying Fast Food.

For the main course, travellers are taken to New Toho Food Center, the oldest restaurant in the country. The restaurant is now run by the fourth generation of the family that built it in 1888. Among its first customers is Philippine national hero Dr. Jose Rizal.

“It’s home of some of the oldest recipes in the country that are still being served commercially today and here you will see a perfect fusion of all cuisines—Spanish, Filipino, and Chinese,” he said.

Cua added that the restaurant is perfect for people looking for savory and authentic Chinese cuisines sold at reasonable prices.

This station brings travellers to Shanghai Fried Siopao, one of the most popular snack shops Binondo’s cultural street Ongpin.

Here, popular fried sipoao (steamed bun) “prepared in the classic way” will be served.

“This Shanghai fried siopao is good on its own. It’s not overrated because of its name. It’s not expensive and it’s what locals here eat on a normal afternoon,” he said.

After finishing plates of salty oriental food, it’s time for some Chinese desserts.

At the last station, travellers will be served with famous Chinese sweets such as butchi (a rice cake made from sweet rice flour molded into a circle with a sweet bean paste filling and sesame seed coating) and siao lung pao from Cafe Mezzanine, better known as The Fireman’s Cafe.

“The pinnacle of culinary creations in Binondo when it comes to pastries and desserts can be found in Eng Bee Tin brand and one of their finest creations is Fireman’s cafe a social enterprise all proceeds go to firefighters,” he said.

To conclude the trip, Tralulu takes travellers to a “secret place” where they will see the city of Manila and its neighbouring business districts from above. Want to find out what it is? Click to get a chance to win a Binondo Food crawl from Tralulu.

The Big Bad Wolf Book Sale is coming

��ý — Mon, 29 Jan 2018 06:59:24 +0000

Fairy tales have taught us to never let big bad wolves in. They are the devourer of children, baby goats, and two out of three enterprising pigs.

Now the Big Bad Wolf is coming and it’s out to get us bookworms and the special fund that we have set aside for literature.

We’re talking about the Big Bad Wolf Book Sale, a Malaysian book sale that started in 2009, and has been touring other Southeast Asian countries like Indonesia and Thailand, which will be having a Manila leg next month. Starting on February 16 at 9 a.m., it will run nonstop for a whopping 231 hours until February 25 at 11:59 p.m. at the World Trade Center Metro Manila in Pasay City. Admission is free.

The Big Bad Wolf Book Sale has been dubbed as the “world’s biggest” of its kind, offering two million books at discounts ranging from 60% to 80%. There’ll be children’s lit, fiction, non‑fiction, and novels.

You can check out their for more information.

Little pig, little pig, let me come in?-LDG

The first M.A.D. talks on volunteerism will be held this weekend

��ý — Thu, 11 Jan 2018 05:02:31 +0000

If volunteering for a cause was a part of your New Year’s resolutions then this might be the event for you.

On January 13—that’s this Saturday— kicks off the year with at the Meralco Theat

The event will bring together 150 youth volunteers from all over the country, including young professionals, student leaders, and members of the academe to listen and learn from each other and the invited resource speakers.

The forum will focus on the bayanihan culture and will promote volunteerism among the Filipino youth.

The first M.A.D. Talks is done in partnership with the Philippine National Volunteer Service Coordinating Agency (PNVSCA) and One Meralco Foundation, Inc.

I am M.A.D., a millennial-led collective of Filipino volunteers, is also preparing a solid list of events for the year. The group was a national finalist in the on-going 15th Search for the Ten Accomplished Youth Organizations (TAYO) Awards.

The group will also launch its re-vamped website and a multimedia promotional ‘Call for Volunteers’ to further spread its advocacy and mobilize the Filipino youth.

Christian Marx Rivero, co‑founder and chairman of I am Making A Difference, Inc., said that student leaders can further hone their potential by joining M.A.D. Camps. These 15 volunteer activities will be headed by I am M.A.D. across the country, to be announced during this forum.

For more information, you can visit I am M.A.D. on or email them on iammadph@gmail.com.

Composing fates

��ý — Tue, 09 Jan 2018 04:58:57 +0000

On a bus ride through the Arizona desert, Merlinda Bobis sees a black bird flying across the grey sky, close to an eerie white sun—a sun unlike the yellow orb often depicted in artworks and children’s drawings, unlike the smiling (or screaming) icon in cartoons. The scene, which could have belonged to any time, ordinary but also bordering on the divine, revealed itself as a poem. “I began seeing images as if for the first time… Seeing was a beautiful accident,” Bobis writes in her afterword. It was the scene or the image’s becoming—bird, sun, sky—that prompts meditation on the progression and arrangement of life. How every decision, or deferral, composes our fates.

but which composes which

and which is accidental?

(“After the Grand Canyon”)

Apart from poetry in English, Bobis has also written works in Filipino and her native Bikol. ��Accidents of Composition, Bobis explores often visceral experiences in her poetry; how global events and natural calamities have changed the course of human lives to the seemingly invisible events in a kitchen foretelling a historical event. Among the poems, knowing and knowledge are presented as afterthoughts, only coming to light after an event is finished or a deed done. Memory teaches us to anticipate and prepare, because remembering is only the first step to a journey.

An incantation

found in the hole

that used to be a house.

…

to the howl

of rain and wind

as he listened to

his daughter say, Ay, Papa—

before the line was cut.

(“The Lost Notebook”)

On the other side of the world,

Ferñao, you too will be gutted

by the namesake of a fish.

(“Auguries of a Fish”)

Traveling allows for a person to expand their horizons and, for some, a way to learn about oneself. Journeying, both in the physical and spiritual sense, are replete in Bobis’ verses, as reflected by her life. From the lush jungles at the foot of Mount Mayon to a placid river in China, life unfolds and, through recollection and documentation, reveal themselves as poems. It can be considered that Accidents of Composition, Bobis’ return to the poetry book after four novels, as a statement about her creative process or poetics.

Within the lyric lines and vivid imagery, Bobis takes the reader into an experience otherwise unfamiliar or alien. Drawing connections between images and texts, events across time and space, Bobis also expands the meaning of ecology from its physical definition. Every thing and image is an index or reference of another, image and texts are combinations of the known and unknown, our relations are mediated and determined by reasoning with elements beyond our control. One can navigate their fate through a ripple caused by the smallest fish; one can find their love in a different time or in virtual space.

So sweetheart

from the other side…

faceless yet to each other

there is hope for us.

(“Love is Planetary”)

There is a balance of cold and warmth, toughness and affection in Bobis’ language. In “After Reming”, for instance, she takes the color purple to mean a bruise, but also a flower, that from the void of loss is the possbility (or inevitability) of return and growth. Even when concrete replaces the earth and technology serves as surrogates of our affection, life will take its natural course.

��Accidents of Composition, travel moves from the mundane to the meaningful, through a tour bus across the desert in 2014 to a galleon crossing the Pacific Ocean in the 18th century, Bobis drew arcs of light—the very poems every reader and seer holds, or will hold, in their hands.

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ALTERNATE SPACE

‘NOT A FAD’

A gastronomic journey through Binondo, curated by a startup

The Big Bad Wolf Book Sale is coming

The first M.A.D. talks on volunteerism will be held this weekend

Composing fates

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