Wazzup Pilipinas News and Events

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Philippine Top Choice Awards for Excellence 2014: Moved to Camelot Hotel on August 23

Wazzup Pilipinas!

Got an e-mail that the formal acceptance of award for Wazzup Pilipinas as the Top Filipino Community Blog Site from the Philippine Top Choice Awards for Excellence 2014 will be rescheduled on August 23, 2014 due to the unavailability of the guest speaker and the many requests from the other winners to have time to prepare their marketing and advertising materials for the event.

What got me excited was the change of venue to Camelot Hotel - that hotel in Quezon City that was made to look like King Arthur's castle. Accredited by the Department of Tourism, Camelot Hotel is the country's only theme hotel that provides first-class accommodation at an affordable price. Conveniently located at #35 Mother Ignacia Street, Diliman Quezon City.

Yey! I really wanted to visit that place, go to the highest part of the castle that is accessible, and shout "I'm the KING of the world!!!"

But, wait...wasn't that for a cruise ship?

Wazzup Pilipinas!

Belgian dance company Kobalt Works, in cooperation with the PETA Theater Center and the Goethe Institut Manila, present COKE, a contemporary dance performance at the PETA PHINMA Theater this June 13-14, 7:00PM.

Arco Renz, the artistic director and principal choreographer of Kobalt Works collaborated with an ensemble composed of PETA Senior Teacher Artists Ian Segarra, Mean Espinosa and Carlon Matobato, dancers Lyg Carillo, Rafflesia Bravo and award-winning pole dancer Eisa Jocson to create the said performance. Guest artists from the famed dance group Sexbomb Dancers were also invited to give input to the movement vocabulary depicted in COKE.

COKE is about entertainment as survival and survival as entertainment. As described on the Goerthe Intsitut website: “The name COKE refers to the relationship between entertainment, pleasure, consumption and danger.”

Wazzup Pilipinas!

To continue with our Market tour of Manila organized by Smokey Tours, your pambansang blog once again brings you more stories about our recent adventure along old downtown Manila. Last time we explored the many vendors selling different wares around Quiapo, the Muslim community, some of their prime products, and their majestic Golden Mosque, and also a glimpse of the Bahay Nakpil. Now, we bring you this time to more iconic places that are also very popular sights in Manila.

The commemorative monument located at Plaza Lacson was our next stop. The plaza, originally named Plaza de Goiti after Spanish conquistador Martin de Goiti who led the conquest of the kingdoms of pre-colonial Manila, is a tribute to the "self-styled Don Quixote" and arguably the greatest mayor of the City of Manila, Arsenio H. Lacson. The monument was made by renowned sculptor Eduardo Castrillo. Manila has erected other monuments of their former mayor in other parts of Manila like the Freedom Triangle plaza grounds near Manila city hall and along Roxas Boulevard. Both were sculpted by Julie Lluch, along with other heroes like Andres Bonifacio and Emilio Jacinto.

Lacson, who earned the moniker “Arsenic” for also being a hard-hitting radio commentator, was elected mayor of Manila in 1951 and was considered by many to be the finest mayor the city ever had. The man died of a heart attack while in office in 1962 at the age of 49.