2014-03-23 ~ Wazzup Pilipinas News and Events

Saturday, March 29, 2014

Avida's HomePossible Simplified: Own a Home in Five Easy Steps

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Avida Land makes home-buying easy and stress-free with HomePossible Simplified, a one-day event that lets you own your dream home in the simplest way possible.

On Saturday, March 29, visit any of the following HomePossible sites: Avida Showroom Glorietta (2nd Floor, Glorietta 4 Makati), Avida Towers Centera (EDSA Mandaluyong), Diversion 21 Hotel (Iloilo), and Avida Towers Riala Project Pavilion (Cebu).

In just a few easy steps, you will be able to choose the perfect community that will suit your needs and lifestyle and pick the best payment option to complement your budget and long-term plan. Special promo offers include stretched payment schemes, discounts and premium items. To top it all off, guests will receive a free brand new iPad Mini Retina upon reservation of their desired home.

The Avida Food Hunt with Chef JJ of Pinoy Eats World

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Everyone loves to eat, and like many of us, everyone prefers to have easy access to lots of choices to feel more pampered and blessed to enjoy a more splendid lifestyle fulfilled by sumptuous dining experiences.

We appreciate dining destinations within our reach, and it's a big plus if the meals served would also be affordable and right on the budget - perfect for the yuppies on the go who do not have time to cook for themselves.

We would also prefer to have more than just the greasy fast-food or frozen microwavable meals. We feel we deserve better than the ordinary because we worked hard and a satisfied stomach is at least our just rewards.

Now imagine living at a place where you'll have access to these conveniences.On a food and restaurant tour called the Avida Food Hunt, Chef JJ Yulo of Pinoy Eats World toured us around the neighborhood of San Antonio Village West of Makati that boasts of many varieties of cuisines offered by lots of promising restaurants.

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"To be a wide-eyed wanderer is a disposition - it is someone who travels aimlessly having one's eyes opened with amazement and astonishment. It's not just for kids who are curious about everything but also for grown ups who continue to journey in life."

The Mind Museum, marking its two years of operation this March as a science, exploration and creativity museum, is the first world class science museum in the Philippines that is ideal for wide-eyed wanderers to journey in the fun world of Science. And in celebration, The Mind Museum invited me and my family, along with other guests, last March 22, Saturday, at around 1:00PM at their place for us to wander and have a great adventure as we explored the fun world of science and what The Mind Museum has to offer this 2014.

The Mind Museum media family day was a special day for my kids because it was their first time to visit the Science museum. They had lots of fun going from one exhibit to another as they try to complete the challenge given to them by filling up with stickers the passport provided per family. Though they never completed the challenge because they were too overwhelmed at the sight of every attraction available at the museum. It took them a great deal of time discovering new learning and scientific information per area.

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Dell, one of the largest PC manufacturers in the worldwide kicks of its Solutions tour in SM Aura last March 18, 2014 with some guest audience from Mongolia have joined the event.

Dell Solutions Tour announced about their new marketing strategy, also their innovation in redefining storage economics. Some of the speakers were from different countries, also Chris Papa, the marketing manager of Dell Philippines, discussed some of the new products of Dell specially here in Asia-Pacific region.

In 2013, Dell broke ground with its impressive line of Windows 8-powered products, including the Latitude 10 tablet, Optiplex 9010 All-in-One with optional touch screen, Latitude 6430u ultrabook, and the XPS 12 hybrid convertible tablet-notebook PC. These became the toast of the client PC market as they received acclaim from PC experts and tech editors from leading publications and blogs.

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Do you love taking pictures of your food in a restaurant before eating?

Then put that habit into something worthwhile by winning prizes for all that effort. Join the Entrepreneur and Franchise Expo 2014 Food Lovers Photo Contest.

It's easy! Here's how to join:
1. Take a picture of your food from your favorite restaurant.
2. Like the Entrepreneur & Franchise Expo FB page.
3. Upload your photo in the Food Loversphoto contest application in the Entrepreneur & Franchise Expo FB page.
4. Share with friends to vote for your entry!

Eligibility
• The photo contest is open to all Filipinos ages 18 years old and up.
• Participants will be required to provide two (2) government-issued IDs or documents attesting to their identity when needed.
• Employees of MediaCom Solutions Inc., its officers, affiliates, sponsors promotional partners and its immediate family membersare NOT eligible to join the contest.
• Contest entry is FREE.

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"Can I follow you home? Because my parents always told me to follow my dreams."

That was the pick-up line shared by Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago during the International Youth Leaders Conference (IYLC), a one-day event that gathered hundreds of college-level, undergraduate youth leaders from colleges and universities all over the Philippines and the rest of the world. Since her audience are mostly the youth, she knows that these future leaders may also have love-life and teen romance competing with leadership-related goals and tasks.

As the keynote speaker, she shared to the youth leaders her wisdom towards leadership. The senator calls on to the youth to help end the cycle of corruption in our government. She did mention, though can be interpreted as less serious, that she plans to offer her recommendations to add a provision to the Constitution to require all individuals running for President and other high positions in the government to have a college degree as a basic prerequisite before they will be allowed to even file for candidacy.

Her speech focused on the qualities of a world-class youth leader and the Crimea crisis touching on the history of Kosovo but knowing the senator who cannot let a gathering pass without sharing a few of his poker-faced jokes, witty pick-up lines, and a few "parinig" pertaining to her "idiot" colleagues in the Senate that are involved in the Pork Barrel or PDAF scam, she got everyone's interest and admiration for her courage to go against the likes of "tanda", "pogi", or "sexy."

IYLC, hosted by AIESEC Philippines, advocates youth leadership by being an avenue for today's youth leaders to not only collaborate with other passionate and like-minded individuals, but to celebrate these youth leaders' triumphs and trials, the achievements of youth leadership in creating social impact.

LINE Call Connects Filipinos To Their Loved Ones Abroad

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LINE, the world’s leading mobile platform with 390 million users worldwide, has released the Android and iOS version of LINE Call, a low-cost IP phone service that allows users to make calls to landlines and mobile devices to over 200 countries and regions—directly from the LINE app without initial set up.

LINE Call connects Filipinos http://line.me/en/call

“There are millions of OFWs (Overseas Filipino Workers) around the world,” says Greg Kim, head of LINE Corporation Philippines. “The only way these everyday heroes connect to their families is by phone—and they pay expensive amounts just to share short conversations with their loved ones. But with the help of LINE Call, they can now reach their families and friends at a much affordable cost.”

Filipino LINE users can now choose between the existing free call service to other LINE users and low-cost calls to any other number with LINE Call, making for a more convenient calling experience.

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On April 6, 2014, a consortium of international and Filipino artists will open the “Haiyan International Fundraising Art Exhibition 2014”. This exhibition, which features art works from over 40 international artists and 17 Filipino artists, showcases the support from the art community from around the world for the victims of Typhoon Haiyan.

“Haiyan International Fundraising Art Exhibition 2014” was conceptualized by Singapore National Artist Goh Beng Kwan and Filipino artist Florence Cincowhen they and other artists from the ASEAN region convened to celebrate the 86th Birthday Anniversary of His Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyadej in Thailand. Alongside Mr. Goh Beng Kwan and Mr. Cinco, the consortium of artists participating in the exhibition includes Mr. Ilseon Ryu (Korea), President and Art Director of Ecorea Biennale Committee and President of the Asia-Pacific Institute of Art & Research; Ms. Grete Marstein (Norway), President of the Norwegian Artists Copyright Association and International Vice President of the International Association of Art (UNESCO); Mr. Trinh Tuan (Vietnam); Mr. Daniel Houle Jayd (Canada), and Mr. Wattanachot Tungateja (Thailand).The exhibition is organized and curated by Mr. Florence Cinco, Mr. Red Mansueto, and Ms. Aimee Villas Adalla.

Each of the artists participating in the “Haiyan International Fundraising Art Exhibition 2014” has contributed an artwork in support of the ongoing relief and reconstruction efforts in the Visayas region.All proceeds from the art works sold during the exhibition will go to MyShelter Foundation, whose Liter of Light program provides low-cost, simple solar lighting to disaster-stricken areas, creating local jobs, teaching green skills, and empowering local communities.

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Here’s another update my friends!

Now here is for another round of interviews. I was able to interview next Calvin Metran which will be handling Girlicious and DanceHall.

Again there were bass speakers in my chest because of nervousness but just like with Elgin, Calvin was very cool with the interview and the questions I asked him. It was like chatting up with an old friend as I can say it.

He has been a dancer since he was in Highschool, at 27 years old you can say he is a Pro already just with experience alone – but Calvin actually told me that he wants to learn more so he went to the United States to be fully trained for three months in Florida under world class choreographers to hone more of his passion – dancing.

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"Every day we make it a point to have one family meal together," shared Regine Tolentino during her talk at the biggest family event, Baby & Family Expo Philippines.

Multi-talented actress and TV host imparted what she had learned about parenting from her own upbringing and her experiences as a mom herself. Born of Kapampangan parents, who had migrated to the US as teenagers, met and married there to raise a family, Regine reminisced about how it was to grow up in the US in a non-Filipino community.

"We're very tight knit...very communicative," Regine stuttered a little as she said this. She was unhesitating in admitting that her family life was far different from that of her peers. She attributed her solid family unit to the efforts of her parents to raise them as Filipino Catholics.

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As the academic year comes to an end, the Philippine Junior Marketing Association (PJMA) wish to provide recreation and entertainment for their members. Bringing the coolest DJs in the Metro such as DJ Ace Ramos, DJ David Callum and a lot more, PJMA will also provide Beerpong to our guest as we take fun too literally.

This year’s Year End Bash entitled: “BLACKOUT” will be happening on the night of March 29, 2014 at One Esplanade, Pasay City. Doors will open at 8 pm.

The Year End Bash is one of the most awaited college parties every end of the academic year. With over 120 member schools and more than 30,000 student members, PJMA believes that the event is a great opportunity for everyone to gratefully revel in celebration of each others' participation in the previous events that all we have collaborated with.

See you this Saturday when all roads lead to One Esplanade.

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

WD Introduces 2-Bay Prosumer Personal Cloud Storage

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More updates from the same company where I got my own personal cloud storage. I haven't actually used it yet as I am still preoccupied with lots of tasks and trying to squeeze my blogging tasks between the rest of my responsibilities but hopefully someday I will be able to finally try the hardware to store all my photos taken from the many media coverage I have been into.

WD, a Western Digital company and a world leader in connected storage solutions, today expanded its prosumer personal cloud solutions with My Cloud EX2, a high-performance two-bay network attached storage (NAS) system. The My Cloud EX2 and My Cloud EX4 products are designed from the ground up for creative professionals and prosumers that need to reliably save, share, back up, stream and manage large amounts of digital data.

“WD is committed to providing a comprehensive portfolio of personal cloud solutions as the need for digital data storage continues to dramatically increase,” said Jim Welsh, executive vice president, WD Branded Products and worldwide sales. “With the My Cloud EX series of products, customers will be thrilled with the advanced features, high-performance and reliability that only WD can provide.”

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Bagging one of the top prizes in the recent regional round, three students of the University of the Philippines-Diliman (UPD) are advancing to the final phase of an international conference hosted by secure content and threat management solutions developer, Kaspersky Lab.

The research paper of Computer Science students Adelen Victoria Festin, Camille Salazar and Flor Marie Carmeli Sison finished third place in the Asia-Pacific, Middle East and Africa Cup of the annual conference dubbed as CyberSecurity for the Next Generation (CSNG).

The Filipino students took home a prize of US$750 for their study "Communect: Secure Community Connection Using OpenBTS as an Alternative Base Station," which was presented at the regional event held at the Korea University in Seoul, South Korea last March 11 to 13.

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Many have been said about One Fighting Championship, but not too many tell the stories behind the men whom people only see courageously fighting against each other as if they are nothing more than just entertainment. Mixed Martial Arts may be a show of force to determine who is more powerful and determined to come out on the top as the champion, but is also made up of real people with feelings, sense and sensibilities that deserve our respect.

Many of them joining the One FC: Rise of Heroes have endearing personal lives that will make you admire, sympathize and fall in love with them. From the story of a young man who had his parents invest all their meager wealth so they could sponsor his career in fighting, to the very generous acts of giving freely some hard-earned money just to help out a colleague that suffered a terrible disaster.

These are men with interesting stories that will touch you once you get to know them more. Just like all of us, the competing spirit does not only exists while they are on the battle arena happening on May 2, 2014 at the SM Mall of Asia Arena in Pasay City, it remains as they go on with their own living their own separate lives.

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OPM is dead.

So many of us would think that is the harsh and very unfortunate reality. FILSCAP President and Conference Director Noel Cabangon, during his introductory talk at the Pinoy Music Summit 2014 held at the Landbank Plaza in Manila last March 19, 2014, may be treading on realistic and undeniable facts that we have earlier predicted to eventually happen when the Internet boomed into a massive source of information that is easily accessible to everyone. There was information overload coming from all over the world, including access to information and content that should have been private or not intended for public consumption.

We could have won in the battle against bootleg copies because there is nothing better than the original album especially when signed by the artist himself, but when downloadable MP3s began proliferating among music lovers, it became a nightmare too hard to wake up from.

Aside from libraries going extinct and is now more like a museum for the new generation belonging to the digital tribe, video shops and record bars have tremendously suffered as well. The pirates boasts "Why buy original when you can easily download for free your favorite songs and videos on your computers, music players and smartphones?"

We did try to embrace technology by offering digital distributions, but the pirates are just too smart, creative, and able to outwit us again. Digital distribution could not fairly compete with the ingenuity of determined pirates.

But would you agree that OPM is dead?

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To continue with our interviews with the ADDLIB Dance Crew, we now feature L.A. Bagtas, another ADDLIB member who will be acting as instructor for the upcoming 2014 ADDLIB Summer Dance Workshops scheduled on March 27 up to April 25, 2014.

Last time we interviewed Elgin Bez, described as the Soul Master of The LAB 3, and learned a lot about the history of the ADDLIB Dance Crew from him, among many other information he shared with us.

The two, along with a few more instructors coming from the dance crew, will be conducting the workshops at the Blue Light Dance Studio located at the 4th level of the Forab Building along Kamuning Road in Quezon City. The students will finalize with a grand recital and a dance concert at the SM Skydome on May 9, 2014.

Below are my questions to L.A. Bagtas and his quite short but surprisingly awesome answers:

DOTC: 100 Transport Sector Projects Awarded In 2013

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Reporting on its procurement performance last year, the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) says that it awarded one hundred (100) projects through competitive bidding last year.

“The DOTC awarded no less than 100 projects in 2013 alone: from the rehabilitation and improvement of numerous ports and airports across the country, to the supply of Coast Guard rescue equipment, to the master planning of Metro Manila transport systems. These projects are now in various stages of implementation and completion,” said DOTC Secretary Joseph “Jun” Abaya.

“While we are still rolling out our big ticket projects, we have been mindful of the plight of the majority of Filipinos who rely on these infrastructure facilities for their livelihood. Fisherfolk who depend on functioning ports and wharves, agribusiness and commercial traders whose businesses count on air cargo transportation – they are already starting to benefit from these crucial projects,” he added.

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I've seen them perform live from the recent United in Laughter event that happened just a few months ago where they were joined by fellow stand-up comics from other countries to raise the level of stand-up comedy in the Philippines.

There are not enough words to quantify how they were able to successfully tickle our funny bones without resorting to the traditional and commonly over-used slapstick or humiliate-the-audience style of comedy that you will usually find in bars and entertainment centers. Comedy Manila's quality of humor is world-class act and strikingly natural that others in the same business should follow their example.

Now here is your chance to personally see them up close and judge for yourself. Get ready to laugh like you’ve never laughed before. Witness a new brand of stand-up comedy in the Philippines.

This May 9, 2014, the UP Junior Marketing Assocation, together with Comedy Manila, brings you UNITED COLORS OF COMEDY, happening from 8 to 11pm at the Bahay ng Alumni in UP Diliman. Experience a different shade of laughter with acts from Eri Neeman, Victor Anastacio, Gb Labrador, Red Ollero, Alex Calleja and Ryan Sarita from Comedy Manila.

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The first thing that pops into my head when I hear the word “adlib” is to improve your speech with your own style. But in the world of dance, adlib takes on a different meaning.

Honestly, I didn’t know them at first. I barely watch television so I have no idea on how they perform and where they put on a show. I tried searching on Google about their group name and I came across the ADDLIB website. They look so promising and fierce. So I got thrilled when I received an invitation to interview one of the most sought-after dance crew in our country.

The moment I stepped into Blue Light Studios, the thought of dropping my bag and sway to the beat of the music filled my mind. But then again I had to pull myself back to reality. The studio was big enough to accommodate quite a number of people. There were people slumped on the floor while some were in the chairs. Four of them were in front of the mirrors warming up. I entered the other room and I saw a couple of girls prepping up.

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Ms. Cory Quirino, National Director of Miss World Philippines, Miss Megan Lynne Young and Postmaster General Maria Josefina Dela Cruz pose at the facade of the Manila Central Post Office.

Miss World 2013 Megan Young was early for her appointed time and had to wait for several minutes inside the car.

The stamps, souvenir sheets and First Day Covers were issued last February 24, 2014 which enables stamp, memorabilia, missosologist, Megan Young fans, school alumni, and Miss World collectors to buy the issuance. After all, it is not everyday that you can see a Filipina winning an international title.

Not all winning countries in the Miss World pageant will automatically issue a commemorative stamps and First Day Cover. Asian countries like India which won Miss World 5 times, 1966, 1994, 1997, 1999, 2000, Israel 1998, China 2007, and 2012 did not issue any commemorative stamps.

The BrainFit Advantage: Success Secret of Top Performers in Class

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Want better performance for your child? Get him brain fit, in the way that suits him.

We walked into BrainFit Studio one afternoon, expecting to find the typical classroom in session, with teachers guiding students in standard tasks.

Instead, what we saw was that, within the same hour, the children – even those in the same class - were working on a different exercise as they focused in meeting their own learning needs, at their own pace.

And it makes complete sense.

“Each individual has a unique brain profile,” according to Ms. Cheryl Chia, Singapore-based clinical physiotherapist and founder of BrainFit Studio. “We assess each brain’s strengths and weakness with a CognitiveMAP, an evaluation tool that determines which of your child’s 5 Brain Pillars* need enhancement.”

The CogMap assessment is a proprietary tool used to measure and analyze the brain fitness level or cognitive skill of a student. They will be able to identify the key opportunity or improvement areas that are needed to be addressed as well as take advantage of the strengths to achieve success and optimum performance.