After the Storm, “Bangon Pinoy”

“Wait a minute! Isn’t ‘Bangon Pilipinas’ Eddie Villanueva’s political party? Ay, yung sa Globe, ‘Bangon Pinoy’ pala.”

That was the first question in my head when I was invited to the media launch for Bangon Pinoy, Globe Telecom’s program to rebuild communities affected by typhoons Ondoy (Ketsana) and Pepeng (Parma). Its main beneficiaries are Globe subscribers and business partners from those communities. Globe also aims to restore, upgrade, and/or relocate their equipment and installations damaged by flooding.

Globe pegs their affected cellular subscribers at 1.6 million total (prepaid and postpaid), and broadband subscribers at 14,000. That’s a lot of people, and Globe is about to spend approximately 150 million pesos on consumer offers for them. Broadband subscribers are set to get rebates on their service from September 26 until the date service is restored, or they can be migrated to Globe’s WiMax service (wireless broadband) with a 50% discount on their first month. Globe also offers free replacement for damaged modems.

While postpaid cell subscribers get one month free, prepaid cell subscribers will automatically receive one week’s worth of load (amount dependent on how much they usually purchase in a week). I’m not sure exactly how Globe can track all the affected prepaid subscribers. Globe doesn’t have their place of residence on record, so they are doing this with a computer algorithm that determines the last few times where the SIM was last loaded and where the SIM usually is active. But what if you work and shop in Quezon City but go home to Marikina? Hopefully Globe can also address situations like that.

I wasn’t directly affected by the typhoons, but I and many friends in Metro Manila experienced deterioration in Globe cell signal in the days after Ondoy. During the Q&A; portion, I asked why Globe lost service, but other cell providers didn’t. CEO Ernest L. Cu answered my question and said one of their elements was in an area that flooded, which took down 150 cell sites in the Pasig and Cainta area (nationwide, Globe has 6,000 cell sites). According to the chief technical officer, wireless networks are now at 99%, while 92% of wireline facilities (broadband and landline) have been restored.

I may not feel the benefit of any of these programs Globe has unleashed on a select subscriber base, but I am sure that subscriber base will appreciate all the help they get. There are also lots of community building efforts in Metro Manila and Northern Luzon Globe is sticking its pie thumb into, so kudos to them.

Tags: Globe Telecom, Bangon Pinoy, Ondoy

Running the QCIM — Vicariously

Yesterday my future brother-in-law got stuck in traffic for an hour due to the first Quezon City International Marathon. The city government and police closed down some major thoroughfares until about 10am, causing massive traffic jams throughout the city.

Today at the gym I caught a woman (a very toned, tanned one) wearing a QCIM singlet. Since we were sharing the same mirror space, I asked her how yesterday’s race was.

Her name is Rose, and it turns out she ran the full marathon (well, about 36 kilometers of it per doctor’s orders) as a tune-up run. I can barely manage 10K without my legs feeling like mush the next day, and here’s a woman who’s serious about marathons! (On a side note, it just irks me when people say they’re running a marathon, and then it turns out they just signed up for the 5K side event at a marathon.) She told me about the Kenyan runners who had come to the Philippines just to race, and their amazing 2-hour time on the marathon. (It takes a normal human being around 4 hours to run 42 kilometers!)

I asked her if the QCIM was a well-organized one because I’d heard about the chaos it brought to the city roads. As far as races go, it seems it was a good one; she was all praises about the entire Quezon City police department that had deployed for traffic and crowd control. The 42K route passed through the La Mesa Dam in some parts, so Army personnel had been deployed there. The downside, according to Rose, is that the 6 kilometers inside La Mesa had no water stops!

She asked me if I ran, and I self-consciously said I only did 10km at most since I got impatient if running took any longer. I had on my running shoes and was clutching my iPod in one hand, about to do 5 kilometers on the gym’s treadmill. I hadn’t run since Ondoy and I was just trying to ease back into running in preparation for this Saturday’s Race for Life and Sunday’s King of the Road. (Yes, I’m running two races this weekend; yes, I know I’m crazy.) She smirked good-naturedly and said, “Parang nag-window shopping ka lang.”

Looks like I’m going to have to increase my mileage in the next few months. Ü

Tags: Running, Marathon

Reading Too Much Into It

(Please be forewarned; there’s a bit of a rant in this post.)

The Philippines is the text messaging capital of Asia, and a lot of vital information useful for the flow of business and commerce passes through those SMS gates. Even more so, a lot of person-to-person interaction occurs in those 160 characters.

What’s missing in texting is nonverbal communication — the tone of voice, the look in a person’s eye, facial expression, body language. I’m sure expats who live in the Philippines will agree that this is a culture with an indirect way of talking. Around here, it’s not what you have to say, but how you say it, that matters to people. Filipinos are an emotional lot, too; if you can rouse emotions, even if what you say is unimportant people will remember you for how you made them feel. Because smileys are so inadequate at getting that sort of information through, people reading text messages just fill in the blanks.

Imagine the many ways that can go wrong.

Imagine a corporate setting when there is a snafu. Person A, upset, sends a text to Person B trying to get to the root of the problem. B construes it as being angry and directed at him. (B has been involved in previous snafus.) Problem is resolved when B explains what happened to A, yes? B also tells A to be careful with his tone — despite there actually being no vocal tone to a text message.

Unfortunately, culture plays deeper into it. In an informal setting, B discusses A’s behavior with C and D, interpreting it as rude. C and D, who do not normally interact with A anyway, discuss this with E and F and G and so on. Notice that poor A has no idea what is going on, and that the entire alphabet has started to label A as an A-hole.

So when A gets in touch with L regarding a collaboration L is backing out of, and texts something without smileys, L is more likely to read this as having an aggressive tone. L tells A to be careful with his tone, once again, and warns A that other people have noticed this. “You have a point, but you are rough and rude in speech.” All that reading from a text message, despite A not even being physically present to be rough and rude in actual speech.

How could A have phrased his text messages better? Should he maybe have written in textese (“hellur powh”) so that there would be less emotional impact to his words than fully-spelled out direct questions?

The lesson to be learned here is not to conduct serious discussions over text media. (In that case, even email is suspect.) Never, if you want people to know exactly what you mean by how you are saying it. So if they say you are an A-hole, at least you know you really are one, rather than just being thought to be one. At least you can insult them deliberately rather than unintentionally.

Tags: Rant, Cultural Communication, Philippines, SMS

Strike a Pose

I’ve been modeling for fun since the beginning of the year. I love getting makeup and hair done, then trying to find the best pose, something to show off both the clothes and the model. (That’s probably why I have a lot of self-portraits on my photostream lately — so I can do it all myself.)

My first ever location shoot was for Jay Romero‘s “Rainy Day Glamor” concept. I found myself and three other models at La Mesa Ecopark on a rainy Saturday in August (weeks before Typhoon Ondoy hit). I brought my own clothes and styled myself, while Peechi Dadula did my make-up. Here are my favorite shots:

Aside from that, I’m also involved in One Hot FABE, a fashion show on October 12 by the clothing brand I’ve modeled for. I sat for Vic a few weeks ago and worked with a new hairstylist and makeup artist — George Delfin and Nanan Villalba. I must say, I love how telenovela kontrabida I looked in the photos:

Funny thing is, I got my first full-page photo in a magazine without modeling for it. UNO Magazine‘s September issue put me on the front page of their Metroplex (events) section. It’s a photo of me accepting a gift bag during the magazine’s Bloggers & Contributors Night.

Which of these looks suit me better?

Tags: Modeling

Relief

When disaster strikes, you start seeing a person’s true mettle. When Typhoon Ondoy struck, I saw people from all walks and ways of life come together in their own ways to help those most severely affected.

I didn’t realize the extent of the damage all over the metro until I logged onto Plurk and found a lot of my online friends checking to make sure everyone they knew was safe. Some we couldn’t get in touch with, and I started to get worried. Despite comparisons with Hurricane Katrina in the US, Typhoon Ondoy (international name “Kestana”) dumped more than double Katrina’s amount of rainfall in 6 hours. It’s that bad.

I woke up the next morning to news about widespread flooding in Marikina, Pasig, and Cainta, among other places. Most of the people who go to my church, Victory Ortigas, come from those places. Instead of holding church services on Sunday, ministry workers and volunteers began rescue and relief operations that lasted round-the-clock starting early Sunday morning. I took on the night shift from 11pm to 8am and disseminated news about our aid efforts, solicited prayers for our rescue workers, and repacked goods for distribution to those in need.

Meanwhile, other friends of mine in the blogosphere got busy. Mike Villar (NOT the Senator, whose name is Manny) set up a website to gather donations for the Philippine National Red Cross through ChipIn/Paypal. The Philippines needs your help. If you’re overseas, please do see if you can contribute financially this way.

Everyone else (like thegreatest and dementia) has been posting, tweeting, plurking news they come across. In this instance, citizen journalism through microblogging and social networks trumped mainstream journalism sources, which resorted to reporting about the news on the microblogging platforms, like Twitter. People whose internet connections remained stable got their news about how to help out mostly from the tweets of people near relief centers. Some people who lived in the affected areas, like Provident Village, were able to upload photos and video of the aftermath.

Today is day three of our relief and rescue efforts. I don’t have work later because two of the gyms I teach at (Eastwood and Metro East) were affected by the flooding. I’m going to use my time instead to volunteer. I may not have much to donate, but my hands and feet are at disposal.

UPDATE: You can now donate directly to the Philippine National Red Cross using Paypal.

http://widget.chipin.com/widget/id/f4bd446ae9ea2ec5

Tags: Typhoon Ondoy, Kestana, Relief Efforts

Rain Rain Go Away

I’ve been down with a cold all week (probably from the exertion and exposure mountain-biking at La Mesa Dam), so I haven’t been able to run at all. But I was really looking forward to the New Balance Power Run tomorrow. I snapped up the last 5K race kit at Planet Sports Trinoma a few weeks ago and had the singlet laundered already so it would lose that “fresh-from-the-factory” scent. This whole week, I’d already laid out what I was planning to wear. Despite news that a typhoon would make landfall this weekend, I even vowed I would run in the rain, since the typhoon would be on its way out by Saturday evening.

Yes, I was going to run in short shorts.

That was before I woke up this morning to the sound of Typhoon Ondoy beating down on my roof. Since Metro Manila wasn’t supposed to be directly hit, nobody expected rain like we saw today. The horizon was white with it, the sky was dark with it, and it showed no signs of stopping.

My house stands on a little hill next to a creek. While normally the creek is a small quiet trickle, the torrential rain pumped up the volume until it became a raging river threatening to overflow its banks. Around our lot, the streets were already flowing with their own mini-streams.

I took this video from the second floor.

Thankfully, earlier in the day New Balance race organizers made an announcement postponing the race — to November, since all the succeeding weekends in Fort Bonifacio had already been booked. On the bright side, I would never have run in this kind of rain so it’s great that I’ll still get a chance to do the race instead of flushing the registration fee down the drain.

My next running event will be the Race for Life on October 10. Organized by the Real Life Foundation, it’s for the benefit of high school and college scholars from underprivileged families in Pasig. This is the second year it’s being held, but the first time I’ll be able to join it. There better not be any rain on that weekend — in fact, I’m gonna pray for just that!

For information on how to aid the flood-stricken, check out Manuel L. Quezon III’s post How to Help.

Tags: Running, Rain

Kicking Up My Heels

“Funny that a pair of really nice shoes make us feel good in our heads — at the extreme opposite end of our bodies.” — Levende Waters, poet

“Two things you can never have too many of: good friends, and good shoes.” — Anonymous

If you’re a woman, you will probably agree with me that a good pair of shoes can be your best friend. Shoes will never make you feel fat, or stupid, or useless, and that’s probably why Manolo Blahnik makes a killing every season.

Since I can’t afford Manolos (sorry, now Nelly the rapper is screaming “Manolos, Manolos!” in my head) but still can’t resist a good pair of heels, I found myself browsing Virtual Mae. I initially placed an order for a different style last Tuesday, but just as I made the deposit, store owner Mae Sergio was informed that all the stock in that particular style had been bought up by a prominent brand based in L.A. (Wow! Means I have L.A. style, eh?)

Instead, Mae offered me a list of styles that she had on hand in my size, to be delivered the day after I paid the balance. She also waived the standard shipping fee, even though I had already figured that into my budget. So, instead of me getting my shoes in two weeks (the time it takes for the shoes to ship from manufacturer to Mae here in the Philippines), I got them today!

unboxing my new shoes

Liz of Project Vanity and I had discussed this shoe purchase and we were both hoping that the shoes would fit. Buying shoes sight unseen is a gamble (even more so than buying clothes online). There’s a big discrepancy between European, Asian, and US sizing, and even when I buy shoes in person, sizing can be off by up to one size. Well, the gamble paid off; the shoes fit perfectly! And the platform heel is angled so comfortably that I haven’t felt the need to take them off since I put them on. I’m still wearing them as I write this post, and will be taking ’em out for a spin in the mall later.

Tags: Shoes, Online Shopping, Kikay

Wedding Daze

I must be of the age when people around me start to get married. And when I say “people around me” I mean my closest friends, relatives, and even my only sister — my younger sister, at that! Now, while there may be some inevitable considerations, like whether my sister needs to pay me a dowry for getting married ahead of me, the one question I will have to face in the upcoming months is: What will I wear?

(And you thought I was going to say “Why not me?” More on that later.)

You see, it was simpler in my early days of attending weddings. I have a stockpile of old gowns and dresses, and if all else failed I could always raid my mom’s closet. I have a gown from [X] I bought on sale in December 2007, and I’ve worn it to two weddings and a debutante’s ball. The trick to reusing gowns is never to use them when the same people are in attendance.

Two Weddings and a Debut

However, the time’s come when I can’t just use any old dress. I will be a bridesmaid in December and a maid of honor in April. What that means is I’ve got to have gowns made specifically to match the rest of the entourage.

Enter my friend, up-and-coming designer Ryan Madamba. We’re part of the same small group at church, and this year he’s taken a step of faith by resigning from his lucrative (yet soul-draining) job at a call center to pursue design full-time. And what a time; three of the women in our group are getting married within the next year (my sister included), and all have retained Ryan’s services. He’s also got clients from referrals, and his hands are getting more full by the week.

Ryan’s Office

We were at Ryan’s swanky new digs that serve as his office and home. Naturally conversation turned to his designs. For kicks, I tried out one of Ryan’s earlier creations, which he had made for a cousin.

It’s pink, but it ain’t mine.

Because it was made-to-order, the dress didn’t fit my own curves. However, I do like the workmanship and attention to detail, and Ryan knows his stuff. We’ll be talking this week about the gowns he’s doing for me as bridesmaid and maid of honor.

Hopefully by next year we’ll be talking about my wedding gown, because I caught the bouquet at a wedding I attended on Saturday. Ü

Now, all I need is the groom.

Tags: Wedding, Couture

GMA7 “Tatakbo Ka Ba” Run

Tatakbo Ka Ba: Is this a political rally?

Back in high school I was a vice-presidential candidate for the student council. It was miting de avance day and we’d gone off to the nearby park to practice our speeches during the lunch break. We ended late and had to race back to school a few minutes before the bell rang. As we ran, I quipped, “So this is running for election!”

Thirteen years later, I found myself joining a race held to campaign for clean and honest national elections. I don’t really know why, as I have turned apolitical and cynical about the country’s politicians (with few exceptions). I think I must agree with Bald Runner, who just wanted to run fast.

When I got to the venue at Fort Bonifacio, I realized this was not just another race. This was also a media event where celebrities from the sponsoring network (as well as politicians) would turn up, and this meant there were people in attendance just to see a famous person. Americans call them “rubberneckers”; Pinoys call them “mga usisero“. Whatever you call them, they filled up the venue to overflowing. It would have looked like a political rally had we not been wearing running attire.

I was at the assembly point by 5:15am, thinking that the gun would sound at 5:30am. Unfortunately for me, I had drunk about a liter of water, and my bladder was rapidly filling. By 6:00am I needed to pee badly, but couldn’t leave my position near the starting line as it would mean that when I came back from the portalet, I’d have to take a position at the back of the line — behind a few thousand runners and walkers. At least I’d only be running 5 kilometers, I reasoned. I could hold it.

Big mistake. As soon as the gun fired at 6:30am and all 5K and 10K runners set out simultaneously, I found my brain divided on whether I should keep running the course, or take a little detour into some bushes and tall weeds to relieve myself.

It didn’t help that a large part of the 5K route was held on a two-lane winding road where there was barely enough room to pass slow runners. It got even worse as I made my way back past the halfway u-turn. Runners who were still on their first half crowded into my lane to get to the water station and I had to slow down to a walk to avoid nasty collisions. Then I had to scream at people to get back on their side of the road because I didn’t want to fall into the ditch at the edge of my lane.

I had hit my wall; it was a lonely run and I really felt it was me against the world. Then a guy in a yellow iamninoy singlet began to pace beside me, and for the next half-kilometer I didn’t feel so alone. He ran past me at the 4K mark.

Finally, I found my second wind, enough to make a final push for the finish line. As I picked up my pace, I spotted Mr. iamninoy walking, out of breath. I ran up to him, clapped my hands and said, “Come on! Come on!” I saw determination flash in his eyes as he started running again, waving his arms in the air.

The final bend before the finish line was crowded by bystanders, photographers, and a TV crew on a platform. I was sprinting. I blew a kiss at the guy trying to hand me a Vitwater and grinned at the TV camera. People were clapping, not just for me but for all the other runners. So, this must be what Heaven would be like, I thought, dizzy with adrenaline and euphoric at not having to pee in the bushes. LOL!

After I collected my giveaways, made a trip to the portalet, and gone back to my car to collect my camera, Mr. iamninoy and I crossed paths again. We slapped palms, and he said, “Good run.” I replied, “Good job.”

I waited for my friend Liz to finish her 10K, and as we took photos at the finish line, I found the Takbo.ph banner, and about a dozen people standing behind it for photos. I’m a member of the online community, so I didn’t want to miss this chance to be in the “class picture.” It surprised me that a few of them recognized me from my blog.

Liz and me

I should order a Takbo.ph singlet

Class Picture!

Although I didn’t have the best run (I wanted to beat 25 minutes, but I took more than 26 minutes), I enjoyed the sense of community, of knowing we were all in it together.

I should pick my races more carefully next time, though. I wish the politicians had run either a 5K or a 10K rather than that silly sub-100meter Unity Walk. Then they might actually have gained some respect from the runners who had turned out for the race. As it turned out, the network used the large turnout to hype their popularity, and the politicians got publicity I don’t think they deserved.

Tags: GMA7 Tatakbo Ka Ba. Takbo.ph, Running

How I Dressed for August Parties

I’m a big believer in choosing what to spend on and save on. Check out these two looks:

Cocktail

Both of them I wore to cocktail parties from last month. Both dresses cost around 300 pesos: the pink one was 250 pesos from Express at Landmark, and the black one was 380 pesos from a bazaar. Since I don’t really like using the same dresses again for events, I aim to buy cheaper dresses so I can have lots of variety on a budget.

I used the same shoes (Nine West) and bag (Coach) — it’s always worth investing in basics that will look good with anything you wear.

Same goes for makeup; it’s great to have lots of variety when it comes to color for eyeshadow and blush, but for the foundation, what lies closest to my skin, I don’t scrimp. I used liquid foundation from Clinique, trying to achieve the poreless and sophisticated look. Did I succeed? I hope so.

Kiss kiss!

For whatever it’s worth, I always enjoy getting in my party finery and looking fabulous no matter the price.

P.S. I’d like to buy more from Clinique, but some of their products just don’t agree with me (except for the foundation and lipsticks). It’s a shame too, because until September 15 they’re giving away gift sets for single-receipt purchases of P3,500. You even get a travel bag if your purchase totals up to P4,000.

I’m game to shop with someone to help them rack up that much in purchases. I need some more liquid foundation!

Tags: Kikay, Clothing, Makeup, Clinique