BusinessMirror November 30, 2019

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Saturday, November 30, 2019 Vol. 15 No. 51

P25.00 nationwide | 24 pages | 7 DAYS A WEEK

IT’S COMPLICATED G

In unique position of complying with 2 regulators, Grab Philippines explains how it ended up being fined by the Competition Commission even though it didn’t overcharge customers.

By Lorenz S. Marasigan

RAB, a tech-enabled transport platform that transformed into a super app, is firming up the disbursement process of the P5.05-million fine that the Philippine Competition Commission (PCC) slapped it with for deviating from its voluntary commitments post-Uber transaction.

transaction with Uber.

When it acquired Uber last year, Grab became a virtual monopoly. For the competition watchdog to approve the merger, Grab submitted a set of voluntary commitments on pricing and service levels.

However, it was found by the anti-trust body to have failed to deliver on its commitments, specifically on the pricing side.

Under its voluntary commitments, Grab is allowed to increase fares for up to 22 percent

JOHN TAKAI | DREAMSTIME.COM

Within the next two months, Grab will be distributing GrabPay credits amounting between P1 and P100 to users who booked Grab rides from February to May 2019.

Those who will be receiving the payouts—3 million users, according to Grab—will be notified five days before the actual disbursement.

This is just part of the P23.45million fine that the PCC ordered Grab to pay for breaching pricing commitments that it voluntarily submitted to consummate its

from the average of the minimum and maximum fares before its acquisition of Uber.

For instance, a GrabCar fare for a two-kilometer ride for 15 minutes on February 10, 2018, costs P100 on the minimum. It is allowed under a regulatory matrix a surge rate of up to 2X, which brings the max fare at P200.

Applying the formula, Grab is only allowed to charge a maximum fare of P183 for the same ride and time on February 10, 2019.

If it had breached this price level even by a centavo, then it is in violation of its commitments.

The PCC found a lot.

“We call that extraordinary deviations,” PCC Commissioner Johannes Bernabe said in a phone interview. “So from a matrix standpoint, Grab did not overcharge passengers, but it deviated from its commitments to the commission.”

Bernabe’s clarification supports the claim of Grab that it never overcharged its users, at least based on the fare matrix approved by the Continued on a2

US presses case to defang the global economy’s trade referee

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By Bryce Baschuk Bloomberg News

IXTEEN years ago, a brash trade lawyer named Robert Lighthizer was nominated to represent the US at the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) appellate body, which officiates disputes that affect billions of dollars in commerce every year.

PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 50.7980

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer speaks alongside President Donald Trump, as he speaks on a US beef trade deal with the European Union, in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, DC, on August 2, 2019. KEVIN DIETSCH/UPI

WTO members, however, chose a different candidate. And now Lighthizer, as the US Trade Representative in Washington, is arguing that the very dispute settlement system he nearly became a part of either needs to be drastically reformed or dismantled.

The arc of Lighthizer’s rocky relationship with the WTO is hurtling toward a potentially dramatic inflection point. The pressure he and the Trump administration are applying on the WTO may, in just a few weeks, render the Geneva-

based arbiter of trade inoperative.

The Trump administration, which previously threatened to block the WTO’s 2020 budget, offered members a proposal this week that would allow it to continue operating, but would hamstring the WTO’s appellate body.

The US said it would back the WTO’s 197.2-million-Swiss franc ($197.6 million) budget for 2020 with the condition that no more than 100,000 francs be paid to appellate body members, an 87-percent Continued on a2

n JAPAN 0.4639 n UK 65.5802 n HK 6.4903 n CHINA 7.2209 n SINGAPORE 37.2037 n AUSTRALIA 34.3750 n EU 55.9286 n SAUDI ARABIA 13.5469

Source: BSP (November 29, 2019 )

A2 Saturday, November 30, 2019

News

BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph

Continued from a1

Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB).

But while Grab is allowed to charge a maximum of P200 for the aforesaid example, its voluntary commitments to the PCC bar it from doing so.

“When Grab acquired Uber, it became a monopoly. We said we can only allow the transaction to proceed under certain provisions. It includes Grab making an undertaking, committing themselves to abide by price monitoring commitments and service quality commitments, in that sense because they promised to us that these are what they will do for clearing their transaction, they are legally bound by their commitments to us,” Bernabe said.

Voluntary commitments

THE intent of these voluntary commitments is simple: Keep the fares at the same levels when Grab still has a viable competitor in the form of Uber.

Grab Philippines President Brian Cu said they will no longer challenge the fine in court, “in the interest of showing good faith.”

“We will comply with the PCC although clearly we could have filed a motion for reconsideration or appealed to a higher authority, which we did not since we want to focus on our business instead,” he said.

However, the P23.45-million fine doesn’t seem to impress one solon, who said that Grab should be slapped with P15 billion in total fines, after its “direct admission of

three million offenses.”

Partylist Rep. Jericho B. Nograles of Puwersa ng Bayaning Atleta on Monday called out the LTFRB for not issuing a fine against Grab for supposedly “overcharging” users in the Philippines.

“These statements are incorrect, misleading, irresponsible and will only hurt the morale of drivers who only want to make a decent living by serving the riding public,” Cu said.

Even commuter group The Passenger Forum (TPF) convener Primo Morillo does not agree with the lawmaker.

He explained that most fines do not directly benefit riders as the money goes straight to the coffers of the national government.

“The decision of the Philippine Competition Commission to make Grab distribute a portion of fines to customers is better than making the LTFRB collect fines that will not be distributed. With Grab’s statement that they will cooperate with the PCC, we are now just waiting for the disbursements to our digital wallets,” he said.

For his part, LTFRB Board Member Ronaldo Corpuz said the regulator will “conduct a review to monitor Grab’s fare setting in order to determine any violation on the existing fare structure issued by the board.”

Cu notes that his group will continue to comply with the fare matrix, as well as its commitments to the PCC. “We respect and welcome the LTFRB’s intent to conduct a review to monitor our fare setting. Grab

continues to work with our regulators, and we maintain our position that our fares remain to be compliant with the LTFRB’s fare matrix,” he said.

DREAMSTIME.COM

Super app’s woes: It’s complicated

“W

hen Grab acquired Uber, it became a monopoly. We said we can only allow the transaction to proceed under certain provisions. It includes Grab making an undertaking, committing themselves to abide by price monitoring commitments and service quality commitments, in that sense because they promised to us that these are what they will do for clearing their transaction, they are legally bound by their commitments to us.”—PCC Commissioner Johannes Bernabe

US presses case to defang the global economy’s trade referee Continued from a1

reduction from the full budget allotment, and spending by the body’s operating fund also be limited to 100,000 francs, a 95-percent reduction.

The Trump administration argues that the organization’s compensation structure creates an incentive for appellate members, who can make more than 300,000 francs a year, to string out cases to boost pay.

While all WTO decisions are made by consensus, the US has an important say in funding matters because it contributes more money than any other single country to the annual budget—22.7 million Swiss francs in 2019, according to WTO data.

WTO members plan to consider the US proposal during a November 27 meeting of the WTO budget, finance and administration committee in Geneva. If approved, the US proposal would avert a possible WTO shutdown on January 1.

Spokesmen from the WTO and the office of the US Trade Representative declined to comment.

The move comes on top of a hold the US has placed on new appointments to the WTO’s appellate body, which won’t be able to rule on new cases next month, in effect suspending its most important function.

Washington said that the appellate body, which is a panel that upholds, modifies, or reverses WTO rulings, has overstepped its mandate and threatens American sovereignty.

Contingency plans

THE possibility of a WTO shutdown was serious enough that WTO Director-General Roberto Azevedo on November 13 sent a message to the WTO’s 646 employees to tell them not to be concerned about their job security.

“There’s no need to change

things at this time,” Azevedo told Bloomberg in an interview. “But we are following it closely.”

Despite Azevedo’s public optimism, WTO officials were said to be considering contingency plans—such as budget cuts to the organization’s non-essential functions for the first half of 2020.

The WTO has a surplus of 48 million Swiss francs ($48.2 million) from its previous budget, which could keep the WTO’s lights on in Geneva until April 2020 if the US budget proposal does not pass this week.

Trade weapons

THE push to retool the judicial panel is led by Lighthizer, who previously complained that “too often members seem to believe they can gain concessions through lawsuits that they could never get at the negotiating table.” Lighthizer argues that appellate body members have strayed from their original mandate, which justifies the current block on new members.

The seven-person panel, already down to the minimum of three required to sign off on cases, will cease to function after two more members end their terms at midnight on December 10.

While WTO members can still bring disputes to the trade body and receive an initial ruling, any party to the dispute could appeal that ruling into legal limbo—thereby providing the losing party with a veto.

Paralysis of the WTO appellate body may be acceptable to Lighthizer, who has shown a clear preference for using a powerful domestic trade weapon—Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974—which offers the US a faster and more effective way to penalize other countries.

Azevedo has said a world economy that lacks the ability to enforce international trade rules would mark a return to the “law of

the jungle.”

WTO members aren’t sitting idly by, and over the past two years dozens of members have offered substantive proposals to address the Trump administration’s concerns—all of which have been rejected. Countries have even appointed New Zealand’s Ambassador to the WTO, David Walker, to identify ways to address the Trump administration’s complaints, but that process has also failed to alleviate US concerns.

Final countdown

MEANWHILE, there is a growing push among non-US members to endorse a WTO rule that allows former appellate body members continue to adjudicate cases they were assigned prior to the end of their tenure.

Though this could help the appellate body to limp along for another year or so, the plan could be dealt a blow if Thomas Graham, a US lawyer who is one of the appellate body’s last remaining members, makes good on his threat to step down at the end of his term on December 10.

Finally, the European Union, Canada and Norway are continuing their efforts to broaden participation in a proxy dispute arbitration system that they argue could supplant the WTO appellate body for any future bilateral disputes among those nations. EU’s chief trade negotiator Cecilia Malmstrom said discussions on that front continue, even as she expects the appellate body to lose its authority next month.

The Trump administration has criticized the EU for setting up a alternative arbitration system rather than addressing US concerns about the appellate body head on. The US budget offer stipulates that only the WTO secretariat—and not the WTO appellate body—may provide funding for such a system.

News BusinessMirror

www.businessmirror.com.ph · Editor: Vittorio V. Vitug

Saturday, November 30, 2019

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PHL hotels welcome SEA Games guests despite unsigned contracts

By Ma. Stella F. Arnaldo

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Special to the BusinessMirror

ROUND 15 hotels where athletes participating in the Southeast Asian Games (SEA Games) are booked in had no signed contracts with the Philippine Sports Commission (PSC) when their guests started arriving.

This was disclosed by sources who participated in the emergency meeting called by the Department of Tourism (DOT) with tourism stakeholders on Wednesday. Among the participants were representatives of some 32 hotels in Metro Manila.

“It was asked during the meeting, ‘who doesn’t have signed contracts yet?’ and a few hands went up. Discovering this, [Tourism] Secretary Berna [Romulo Puyat] immediately called [PSC chair] Butch Ramirez to ensure the contracts of those hotels were signed that day,” said a source privy to the meeting.

Asked what held up the signing of the contracts, Ramirez said “there were addendums that were attached to the contracts pertaining to charges on extra rooms, extra meals, etc. [But if you’re used to dealing with hotels], you know these addendums can follow, but the main contract can be signed already.”

T he source added, the hotels received the guests, even without their contracts signed.

“Kahiyaan na lang. [Out of embarrassment.] They could have turned those guests away.” But the source stressed, “As of [Thursday], those contracts had already been signed.”

Representatives of private companies also attended Wednesday’s meeting, expressing support to the DOT’s call to put the country’s best foot forward in hosting the SEA Games.

“Jollibee was there, and they wanted to provide extra food for the athletes. The Manila Water Foundation was there, [and] Kleen

Kanteen wanted to provide refillable water stations in the hotels.

Victory Liner volunteered their buses for the games. Even hotels like Manila Hotel and Makati Shangri-La, said they were willing to provide halal-certified food to other hotels within their vicinity.

So everyone really stepped up to help,” another source revealed.

DOT insiders said they were offering Phisgoc to help out in preparing for the SEA Games “as early as last year,” but were told the foundation would manage it by themselves.

The DOT on Thursday also met with 51 representatives of hotels in Clark and Angeles City in Pampanga, Tarlac, and Subic, Zambales.

In a news statement, the DOT said the hoteliers rallied behind Romulo Puyat’s call to extend the best in Filipino hospitality and ensure that the needs of the visiting athletes are met throughout their stay.

“Through teamwork and determination to showcase Filipino hospitality at its best, we stand to win the whole thing altogether,” she said.

The DOT added that upon request of the Phisgoc, the hotel operators readily agreed to double up help in monitoring arrivals, food, and laundry, and other needs of the athlete delegates, as Phisgoc volunteers will only be deployed starting today, Saturday.

Tourism Undersecretary for Tourism Regulation, Coordination and Resource Generation Arturo P. Boncato Jr. told the BusinessMirror, “What we emphasized is for last-minute ar-

TOURISM Undersecretary Arturo P. Boncato Jr. (center) meets with representatives of hotels in Pampanga, Subic and Tarlac to discuss ways they could step up in enhancing their athlete-guests’ experience in the country. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

rangements on rooms or food, the hotels have to exercise their best effort always. Like when they plan buffets, among others.”

Hotel operators also agreed “to share real-time updates on their social-media sites to keep the public abreast on the hosting situation,” said DOT. The 30th SEA Games is expected to require a total of 137,563 room nights from hotels cross the four sporting hubs, namely, Manila, Southern Luzon and La Union, Clark, and Subic, with delegates staying from November 19 through December 12. (See, “SEA Games to bring in P894-million revenue to hotels,” in the BusinessMirror, November 27, 2019.)

Following Wednesday’s meeting of the DOT with hoteliers, tourism industry stakeholders, and Phisgoc officials, the DOT also called for volunteers to help assist in hosting duties for the games. It was revealed during Wednesday’s meeting that “a number of volunteers resigned. Many of them didn’t know what to do, or what their assignments were.”

DOT’s call for volunteers went out immediately on social media.

Sources disclosed as of Thursday, most of the volunteer slots in Metro Manila have already been filled, “but a few more are needed in Clark.” Those who wish to volunteer can check the DOT’s Facebook page.

Storm

THE Philippines is bracing for floods and landslides from Typhoon Kammuri that may hit its

capital and affect the Southeast Asian Games next week.

K ammur i, which means “crown” in Japan, is packing maximum winds of 130 kilometers per hour and gusts of up to 85 knots, according to the latest bulletin from the US Navy and Air Force’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center.

The storm will be 1 nautical mile from Manila, its closest point of approach on December 3.

“There is the possibility of Kammuri intensifying into a super typhoon,” the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council said in a news statement.

The typhoon is expected to enter Philippine waters as early as Saturday night, according to the nation’s weather bureau, and next week will likely bring heavy rains to Luzon island where the 30th Southeast Asian Games will be held.

“It is likely that K ammuri could impact the Philippines as a powerful typhoon early next week,” Accuweather Senior Meteorologist Adam Douty said on its web site. He warned of lengthy period of heavy downpour that could lead to f looding and mudslides in hilly terrain.

Kammuri is following a track similar to Typhoon Rammasun in July 2014, which killed 106 people in the Philippines and damaged properties worth P38.6 billion ($761 million), the disaster monitoring agency said. It is also comparable to Typhoon Durian in December 2006, which killed more than 730 people.

With Bloomberg News

Mayor Isko Moreno partners with Bayad Center, Multisys to make Manila a Smart City

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ANILA Mayor Francisco “Isko Moreno” Domagoso has sealed a tripartite agreement with Multisys Technologies Corp. and CIS Bayad Center Inc. to provide payment automation for the city’s residents.

Part of Domagoso’s ongoing efforts to ease business and government operations in Manila is to expedite transactions through e-payment services. These online portals will offer payment services for the processing of real-estate taxes and business permits.

“Technology in governance paves the way for business efficiency, customer convenience and human discretion limitation. This partnership that will implement online payment processing in Manila will not only expedite our operations, but will also help us in preventing and eradicating corruption,” Domagoso said.

The integration of Bayad Center’s bills payment platform to Multisys’s Smart City and Smart Government platforms will simplify transactions for bills payments and other local government services.

Aside from real-estate taxes and business permits, this collaboration will also push for the digital processing of motorized operator’s permit, civil registry, public market, public hospitals, and senior

citizen benefits.

“Multisys is committed to advancing the countr y by contr ibuting technolog y advancements, ex pediting processes, centra lizing collections and automating the systems of loca l gover nment units,” Multisys Chief Operating Officer and Founder Dav id A lmirol Jr. said. “ We are proud to say that apart from this partnership w ith Bayad Center, our company w ill a lso be developing the Go Manila!

App to further help in lifting the heav y burdens of the Manileños.”

PLDT-backed leading software solutions company Multisys is the developer of Go Manila! App, a onestop mobile application to provide more means to ease the lifestyle of every Manila resident.

A4 Saturday, November 30, 2019 | Editor: Mike Besa

www.pinoygolfer.com

The Writing on the Wall: The word is ‘sustainability’

In six months the South Course’s greens will be something to behold.

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Story & photos

by Mike Besa

quarter century after the great golf boom and subsequent bust of the 90s, many clubs are struggling with the practices of excess that were the norm of the day.

All of the golf courses built or renovated at the time wanted to bring “modern conditions” to a country weaned on carabao grass fairways and zoysia greens. Santa Elena and Manila Southwoods set the early benchmarks with their immaculate fairways and lightning-fast greens.

Other clubs rushed to recreate the same conditions at their golf courses, unaware of the magnitude of the project that they were taking on.

Augusta National is single-handedly responsible for the predicament in which golf courses all over the world find themselves. The immaculate conditions at Augusta come at a staggering cost. The club has an unlimited budget to keep the golf course the most beautiful playing field in the history of televised sport, so to have it as a model for a golf course with financial constraints was madness.

Then there was the challenge of maintaining foreign turfgrasses and trying to insulate them from our aggressive endemics. The cost schedules were daunting but the clubs persevered, motivated by the astronomical share prices demanded by each new offering. It was greed without the slightest consideration of sustainability.

In the two intervening decades, the courses with the deepest pockets persevere with their programs. Others have surrendered their golf courses to the most dominant of the endemics then making the best of the situation by prepping the playing surfaces, as well as can be done for regular play.

Valley Golf and Country Club has faced this issue head on in the last two years. The greens on the South Course have always been problematic. The amount of shade around the greens doomed the tifdwarf greens. The club struggles to get them ready for the biggest club events and, a little over a year ago, decided that they would resurface the greens on the South Course with zoysia matrella which is employed most successfully on the shorter North Course.

The project began under the stewardship of thenGeneral Manager Dan Salvador and now in the capable hands of current GM Cliff Friedman. I reached out to Cliff and he was quick to throw down the red carpet and give me a tour of how Valley Golf was tackling with the problems on the South Course.

The conversion process was well under way when Friedman arrived at Valley. He was quick to recognize the value of the work that was being done and worked with their maintenance contractor VMJ to speed up the process.

The greens look like they’re covered with polka dots, but these are zoysia matrella plugs. These plugs help spread the zoysia and will accelerate its takeover of the greens.

The South Course has also struggled with the turfgrass on its fairways, as well. Some of the more shaded fairways already had large colonies of another type of zoysia; zoysia japonica. So rather than fight the infestation, the club helped it by scattering plugs from aerification of japonica laden fairways.

We took a tour of one of the South’s most problematic fairways—the 11th. It’s one of the narrower fairways on the course and lined on both sides with mature mahogany and acacia trees. The amount of shade, which was fatal to the imports, hardly fazed the japonica which took over very quickly. The muddy fairways are a thing of the past. Similar progress is being made on all the South Course’s fairways.

Beyond the fairways, the club has been hard at work rehabilitating the club’s waterways and lakes. Valley has the misfortune to sit in downstream of the many communities in the area. That means during the rainy season, trash from the more elevated communities flows down the streams into the club’s lakes.

Friedman tackled this challenge head on, putting in place an aggressive program to clean up and protect the club’s lakes. A series of staggered garbage traps was erected in the waterway feeding the lakes bordering 10, 11, 12, 16 and 17, and much of the silt that had accumulated over the previous wet seasons was dredged out. There’s still work to be done but this part of the course looks better than it has in a long while.

The course isn’t at its best at the moment but give it six months and the South Course should be in superb condition.

Really, the club had little choice in the matter. Embracing it was the lesser (and far cheaper) of the two evils.

While Valley’s choice was straightforward, many golf clubs are still undecided about how to proceed. Many continue to fight the infestation of their precious turfgrasses by endemic invaders, but it’s an expensive war that they wage. Most will come to the point where they’ll need to decide whether it’s a battle that they want to keep fighting or just give in to the

invasive species and adjust their expectations.

It’s going to be a tough call for a lot of clubs. Many of our golf courses are signature designs of great architects and golfers. Some have set standards that the club must maintain to keep their status as a signature design. These courses have the toughest task ahead of them. They’ll either negotiate with the architect to relax his standards or they’ll have to find an alternative turfgrass that will be acceptable to both parties.

Gone are the days of excess. These are tough times that call for hard decisions. The race is on to find a sustainable solution for the industry, one that doesn’t compromise aesthetics or the golf experience and doesn’t break the bank. It’s time to find a solution that allows the game to live on and grow at a rate that future generations can ethically sustain.

These choices will affect the growth and future of the game. Sound choices will have to be made to keep golf moving forward.

Garbage traps set in the canal between the 12th tee and 16th green have done much to help clean up the club’s waterways and lakes.

www.pinoygolfer.com | Saturday, November 30, 2019

www.pinoygolfer.com

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Heroic rise on Tour for Sungjae Im I

f Sungjae Im was to appear in a Marvel blockbuster movie, he could easily slip into the role of any superhero.

Such has been the Korean phenom’s explosive rise in the game that his peers and commentators on the PGA Tour have given him nicknames, such as “Ironman,” “The Beast” and “The Machine.”

In December, the 21-year-old Im will have another opportunity to reinforce his growing reputation when he makes his debut for the International Team against the United States Team in the Presidents Cup at The Royal Melbourne Golf Club.

Im, picked as one of Captain Ernie Els’ four wild-card selections, could well play a starring role as the new “Smiling Assassin,” a moniker given previously to Shigeki Maruyama when the Japanese star smiled and swept all before him to go 5-0-0 at Royal Melbourne in 1998, which helped the International Team secure its lone victory to date. It could prove to be a good omen for Im, who was born in 1998.

Captain Els is confident his Korean pick will rise to the occasion and unleash his firepower on the American juggernaut, led by playing captain Tiger Woods. During the 2018-19 PGA Tour Season, Im finished an impressive 19th on the FedExCup points list following seven top-10s, thanks largely to 480 birdies and 18 eagles, the most recorded by any player.

“He’s had one hell of a year, lots of top10s,” enthused Els. “Played his way into the team with his consistency and showing a lot of spirit with the other players. I just loved the way he approached the game…you know, very cool, calm, collected. I definitely wasn’t that good when I was 20, 21 years old but these kids, these guys are world-class players. I’m not afraid to choose rookies and I’m not afraid to play them.”

Im’s English is presently limited and like Maruyama, he overcomes the language barrier by constantly smiling. However, behind the façade, Im is tenacious and possesses an in-built determination to succeed in the game.

Growing up on Jeju Island, which hosts the PGA Tour’s only event in Korea, The CJ Cup at Nine Bridges, his golf-mad parents, Ji Taek and Mi Kim, introduced their son to the sport at an indoor facility when he was four. By the age of eight, he was beating his father and later in his early teens with national amateur teammate Si Woo Kim— the 2017 Players Champion—they both grew up idolizing the man who will lead the US Team at Royal Melbourne, Woods.

“He was a god to us,” Im told Golf.com.

At a tender age of 17, Im joined the professional ranks and cut his

Sungjae Im Getty Images

teeth on the Japan Tour where he amassed an impressive 14 top-10s from 51 starts during the 2016 and 2017 seasons. His talents inevitably led him to the Korn Ferry Tour in 2018 where he dominated with two victories and three runner-up finishes to win the money list. Not only was he voted Rookie of the Year and Player of the Year, Im achieved his American dream by securing his PGA Tour card.

“In your first year, you just want to get your card for next year. To survive,” said Im, who was the only rookie to qualify for the 2019 Tour Championship. “I’ve played better than expected. I could give myself 9 out of 10 [score].”

Jordan Spieth, winner of the 2015 FedExCup and a prodigy himself, expects Im to remain a talking point for a very long time in the game. “He worked his way up from a very young age through the Korn Ferry Tour and now the PGA Tour seems easy for him which is unusual as generally there is more of a learning curve. But he seems to be ahead of the curve,” said Spieth.

Kevin Na, a four-time PGA Tour winner added: “I can see him as being the next best Korean player.”

Im, ranked 33rd in the world at the time of writing, hopes to end a memorable 2019 campaign with a rare Presidents Cup victory for the International Team. The US has won the last seven consecutive editions. “It has always been a dream of mine to make the Presidents Cup, so I’m so happy to have been chosen as a captain’s pick. I really want to beat the US Team,” he said.

He recalls watching on TV the 2015 Presidents Cup in Incheon, South Korea, where home hero Sangmoon Bae was involved in dramatic final singles match against Bill Haas, which went down the wire and ended in a narrow one-point victory for the Americans.

“It motivated me a lot to make the International Team one day,” he said. “I know that if I play to my capabilities and have a good performance, I can definitely contribute to the team.”

Im thinks he can establish solid partnerships with Japan’s Hideki Matsuyama or fellow rookie Joaquin Niemann of Chile.

“I’ve played a lot with Joaquin and we have a similar style of play. He’s very accurate and I feel like the way we execute our short game is similar. With Hideki, we both have unique swings, so maybe we can get in the heads of the American players if we were to be paired together!,” laughed Im.

Note: Chuah Choo Chiang is senior director, communications of the PGA Tour and is based in Kuala Lumpur.

Dr. Micah Woods, chief scientist and president of Asian Turfgrass Center, focused on a continuous improvement using nutrient and organic matter testing. Why golf courses should test, benefits, and how to use the results/summary report to feed an annual maintenance plan.

The 3rd Nutranta Best Practices Seminar

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utranta, as a chemical company and distributor of the elite brands of agricultural chemicals, is committed to education and supporting the Philippine Turf Industry. By hosting an annual Best Practices Seminar, they invite industry experts from around the World to share their best practices to improve maintenance techniques and playing conditions of the golf courses in the Philippines.

Nutranta’s third annual Best Practices Seminar was hosted by Eagle Ridge Golf & Country Club focused on Annual Planning & Budgeting.

The program provided attendees a great combination of theory and real-life application—how to create and budget an annual maintenance plan. A total of 65

attendees representing 25 golf courses, three landscape contractors, and one University. Apo Golf sent staff all the way from Davao and Baguio Country Club also sent staff. Nutranta’s Best Practices Seminar is greatly appreciated by the local golf industry.

A three-month trial had been conducted on the 9th hole of Eagle Ridge’s Aoki Course to showcase the effectiveness of Nutranta’s suite of products. Nutranta provide a threemonth plan and all the fertilizer and chemicals for the green, tee box and fairway. Nutranta demonstrated what could be accomplished using high-quality products on the golf course. The greens showed improved color, density, and putted better than the control holes indications of the efficacy of the chemicals involved.

Andrew McDaniel, assistant GM and superintendent of Keya Country Club, Japan spoke about planning for success. The discussion focused on how to create an annual maintenance plan and budget. McDaniel also touched on timing of maintenance practices to achieve the best possible tournament conditions.

Bella Fe Carmona, from the Fertilizer and Pesticide Authority (Pesticide Division) with 41 years of experience, presented how to safely and correctly dispose of pesticide containers.

Presidents Cup blog

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By Tiger Woods, US Team Playing Captain

t’s been a whirlwind month for my team and me.

Beginning with my four captain’s picks, it was truly a special evening at The Woods Jupiter as we finalized the team.

Making the selections was a very difficult process.

We were spoiled with the number of quality golfers who had played well, especially lately. With the competition nearing, I was paying very close attention to how guys performed at the start of the new season and during the Asian Swing.

“Wood” (Gary Woodland) was one of those guys who really did well.

He will be the first to tell you that after winning the US Open, he didn’t finish last season the way he would have liked. However, after missing out on one of the automatic berths, he proved why he deserved to be on this team with top-5s in Korea (The CJ Cup at Nine Bridges) and Japan (Zozo Championship).

And to have him with me at the restaurant for the announcement made it that much more special. This is going to be his first team event to cap off what has been a special year. He’s just a good dude that all the players wanted on the team.

Speaking of good dudes, Tony Finau is as genuine as they come and is going to be another key piece of the squad. He is one of those guys who is going to light up the team room but will back it up on the course with consistent play.

This is a guy who has qualified for the Tour Championship the last three years without a win, which is tough enough to accomplish once. It goes to show how reliable his game has been week in and week out, and that is exactly what this team needs. Everyone wants to play with Tony, so we are looking forward to having him.

I actually pranked Tony a little when I called to tell him he was on the team. I could feel his heart sink when I said I had some tough news. So, I let him sweat it out for a few seconds before welcoming him to the Presidents Cup. I couldn’t imagine this team going into battle without Captain America. Patrick Reed will be one of our team veterans competing in his third Presidents Cup. He’s is as fiery as they come and bleeds red, white and blue.

That type of energy and passion is going to be very important as the away team.

He is just one of those guys who is going to give you absolutely everything he has to earn a point for you.

Finally, to become the Presidents Cup’s second-ever playing captain is a real thrill and an honor. Hale did it successfully back in 1994. I am looking forward to this being a challenging and rewarding experience.

Once I didn’t make the Tour Championship, I knew the Zozo Championship was going to be a big event, and to perform the way I did after my knee procedure validated that I could play and help the team. Plus, to get my 82nd PGA Tour victory and tie Sam Snead’s all-time win record made the week that much sweeter.

I am really going to rely on my three assistants, Fred, “Strick” and Zach while I’m playing. With two of them having been Presidents Cup captains in the past, the team will be in good hands while I’m on the course.

It’s going to be hard work, but it is something I’ve been looking forward to for a long time. I’ve been a captain’s assistant in two Cups, so understanding what the various roles are is really going to help.

Recently, I had to make a fifth captain’s pick following Brooks Koepka’s withdrawal from the event due to injury.

Brooks and I talked, and he is disappointed that he is

Tiger Woods and Gary Woodland photos by Getty Images

Patrick Reed

unable to compete, but I just told him to get well soon and that we’re sorry he won’t be with us in Australia.

That said, we are very happy to have Rickie Fowler join the team. He is someone we seriously considered for a pick and is so well respected and liked by his teammates. This will be his third Presidents Cup and I know he is excited to help us bring home the Cup. It’s hard to believe we are so close to going down to Royal Melbourne Golf Club. I want to congratulate

Ernie Els (International Team captain) on rounding out his team with Jason Day, Sungjae Im, Adam Hadwin and Joaquin Niemann. Going against Ernie and his team will be not be easy, especially with the outstanding Aussie fans supporting the International squad, but we’ll be ready.

Till next time.

Tiger Woods

DIGIT TRANSFOR

A BusinessMirr

A6 Saturday, November 30, 2019 | www.businessmirror.com.ph

LEADING THE CHARGE TOWARDS DIGITAL

D

By Stephanie Joy Ching

IGITAL transformation is imperative for all businesses, from the small to the enterprise.

That message comes through loud and clear from seemingly every keynote, panel discussion, article, or studyrelated to how businesses can remain competitive and relevant as the world becomes increasingly digital.

According to a 2018 study by the International Data Corporation Asia, digital transformation will add around US$8 billion to the Philippines’ GDP by 2021. It will also increase the annual growth rate by 0.4 per cent. As of 2017, digital products and services s uch as mobility and cloud amounted to 3 per cent of the GDP. Clearly, the Philip-

pines is well on its way to becoming a more digital oriented economy, with many innovators and leaders changing the way we live with their constantly evolving technology.

On October 2018, FINTQnologies Corp. (FINTQ), along with the Bangko Central ng Pilipinas (BSP), Chamber of Thrift Banks (CTB), Rural Bankers Association of the

Philippines (RBAP), and the Microfinance Council of the Philippines (MCPI) launched the Road to 20 by 2020 Campaign. It is a multi-stakeholder campaign that aims to prepare financial institutions for digitalization. Under the Digital Transformation Accelerator Program (DTAP), it aims to achieve many things by the end of 2020.

Their goals include assimilating 20 per cent of financial institutions to PesoNett and InstaPay, leapfrog digital financial transactions to 20percent from 1 per cent, reduce unbanked LGUs to 20 per cent from 35 per cent; and bringing 20 million unbanked and underserved Filipinos to formal financial system.

Despite the fact that there is still 40 per cent of the population who do not have access to these platforms due to geographical reasons, the FINTQ reported that more and more Filipinos are now using online lending and banking platforms.

Meanwhile, PhilCare developed HeyPhil, an app that will make health plan coverage and benefit package information more

Wilcon Depot builds strong online presence

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HE retail industry in the Philippines is in the era of new digital innovations. With the rising customers’ expectations and changing shopping behavior, more and more retailers are merging their brick-and-mortar stores into digital touchpoints to give the most advanced, productive, and seamless experience for its customers.

Recognizing the advantage of technology in the industry, Wilcon Depot, the Philippines’ leading home improvement and construction supply retailer, strengthens its commitment to offering excellent customer-focused services and fulfills its goal to deliver better product offerings through elevating its in-store services and giving its customers digitally-enabled retail experiences.

Continuously embracing the digital transformation to meeting the ever-changing preferences of its customers, Wilcon utilized new business platforms in providing faster and more efficient customer service.

In the form of corporate website, an e-commerce platform, mobile application, and social media pages such Facebook and Instagram, Wilcon enhances its accessibility to its growing valued customers. With these digital platforms, Wilcon customers can access all of its product and service information with just one click.

Wilcon establishes its online presence and showcases its products and services through social media channels—Facebook and Instagram. Identifying these sites as great platforms to tell the company’s brand stories and product offerings, Wilcon maximizes the sites to reach the widest possible audience. Customers can get daily product descriptions, design inspirations, tips, and how-tos with its social media accounts.

Building an exponential increase of its customer base online, its corporate website allows the valued customers to see and be updated on what the company accomplishes, as well as, customers can get notified with its local promotions. Customers can also explore the company’s e-Newsletter and weekly home tips and tricks.

More homeowners and builders can now easily and more conveniently build big ideas for their homes through the expansion of its service online. With the emerging trend of e-commerce, the giant retailer has already decided to embrace the evolving digital world.

Aiming to give exciting and innovative shopping experience with increased convenience to all of its valued customers, Wilcon has successfully launched its online store just this January and brought its wide array of product categories ranging from Appliances, Automotive, Building Materials, Electrical, Furniture, Hardware, Home Interior, Housewares, Outdoor Living, Paints and Sundries, Plumbing, and Sanitarywares to be purchased online.

With its aspiration to be the top-of-mind home retailer—not just in the physical store but also online, Wilcon keeps on transforming and innovating its customers' shopping journey. Rewarding its valued customers hassle-free shopping experience, Wilcon shoppers can now browse product information and shop online from Wilcon's high-quality home building and improvement needs by visiting shop.wilcon.com.ph.

Wilcon Online shop is a user-friendly site that provides a seamless online transaction with its customers.

Customers just have to log on to shop.wilcon.com.ph, create their account, and they already have all the access to browse the wide product categories and shop. Its online store services are available to parts of Metro Manila, Rizal, and Cavite, and will soon be available nationwide.

Offering more incomparable customer service experience, Wilcon unfolds its newest business venture for their valued customers after launching the Wilcon Loyalty mobile app, a digital version of Wilcon Loyalty Card. The mobile app allows its customers to earn and check their points, as well as convert their purchases to rewards after they sign up. The Wilcon Loyalty Mobile App also lets the customers locate the nearest branch of Wilcon, explore its wide product categories, get notified with upcoming exclusive in-store promotions and events, redeem their earned loyalty points and use these points to pay for their next purchase, check their earned loyalty points real-time, and enjoy big savings and year-round exclusive discounts and freebies.

As the most ideal home shopping destination of Filipinos, with its endless product choices and unparalleled customer services, Wilcon will fulfill its goal of providing utmost and shopping convenience for its customers. Wilcon Depot keeps its valued customers satisfied by offering the highest quality home improvement products and delivering superior home shopping experience.

Enjoy the convenience of shopping at Wilcon by visiting shop.wilcon.com.ph and track your earned loyalty points with its Loyalty Mobile App made available for download at the Google Play Store for FREE.

Find all your home improvement needs and construction supplies, all in one place and shop at any Wilcon store near you with its 56 retail outlets across the country.

For more information about Wilcon, you can log on to www.wilcon.com.ph and follow them on their social media accounts at Facebook and Instagram @ wilcondepot.com.ph.

ITAL RMATION

IN ENCHANCING CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT

ror Special Feature

www.businessmirror.com.ph | Saturday, November 30, 2019 A7

L TRANSFORMATION accessible. It also tracks availment records, views upcoming Annual Physical Examination schedule, and allows users to gain quick access to the list of affiliated clinics or hospitals. HeyPhil functions as a virtual agent that cuts the time spent waiting for the doctor, along with making the process of acquiring Letter of Authorization (LOA) forms much faster. By transforming the medical market with technology, PhilCare was recognized as one of the “13 Outstanding Digital Leading Organizations" at the Regional IDC Digital Transformation Awards 2018. For developing this HMO app, PhilCare was labelled as the Asia/Pacific Omni-experience Innovator of the Year.

Lastly, one of the most recent leaders in digital transformation, Entrego, is born from the logistics team of Zalora after noticing the need of a fast-growing e-commerce platform, it offers technology-driven logistic solutions to empower business performance for clients.

On July 2019, they announced the launch of myEntrego, a platform for small to medium enterprises to have

a nationwide reach. As of 2019, Entrego has expanded to 64 hubs that service 32,744 barangays across Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao.

Here are the top six reasons all businesses need to embrace digital transformation in order to remain relevant in an era where the rise of technology has shifted the goalposts in terms of customer expectations as well as the expectations of your staff and the entire business ecosystem. This is according to Dynamo6, the latest New Zealand based IT services company to reach the prestigious level of Google Cloud Premier Partner

Digital innovation is your competitive advantage

WHILE the message that your business faces irrelevance if it doesn’t transform may be a frightening one, it comes with a positive flipside: digital transformation is your opportunity to etch out a competitive advantage.

Technology and the Internet have removed geographic barriers to business and opened up massive new markets for any enterprise pre-

pared to embrace the opportunity.

Embracing the digital opportunities also allows businesses to adopt a new nimble-thinking mindset. Increasing the speed of implementing ideas enables a “fail fast, to succeed faster” ethos that will keep them relevant in the market.

Employees are demanding change

IT’S a cliché but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true: a business’s staff are its greatest assets. While the Internet Age has transformed the demands and expectations of customers, it has done the same for employees.

To retain the best people, you need to offer them a “user experience” within the organization that enables them to thrive.

This includes everything from providing fit-for-purpose technology to embracing and enabling remote working. Employees increasingly value workplace flexibility above remuneration. By delivering on staff expectations through a digitally transformed business, you will be rewarded with the bottom-

line benefits of a productive and effective workforce.

A flow-on from this, of course, is benefits in recruitment. The best staff will be attracted to your organization and your high-achievers won’t want to leave.

The internal communication benefits of an effective digital transformation also include breaking down the silo mentality that businesses have traditionally grappled with, leading to improved processes and organisational unity – again with positive bottom-line impacts.

For customers, it’s all about the user experience

WHETHER it’s through a company’s app on their phone, a website visit or an automated phone call, digital is now firmly at the heart of the consumer’s experience with your brand. That experience needs to be seamless, responsive and efficient – if it isn’t, your customers will abandon you in a heartbeat for the competition.

But, again, don’t let this new reality frighten you. Instead, embrace the benefits it provides. For a digitally transformed business, each customer interaction is a goldmining opportunity to glean information and insights about what is

working and what is not.

Data and analytics reign supreme

THOSE vital digital interactions with your customers generate and rely on an increasing volume of allimportant data. In turn that data feeds the analytic functions that give digitally transformed businesses the insights they need to fuel the perpetual cycle of fulfilling customers’ needs and expectations.

A successful digital transformation includes readying a business for the demands of “big data” – the ability to analyze all aspects of customers’ behavior and use those insights to understand the impact on a brand. Through their interactions with you, what are customers telling you you’re doing right and what are you doing wrong?

Without making the transformation that puts data and analytics at the heart of a business’s operations, that business will be left in the dust by competitors who have made the shift and, as a result, are enjoying the wealth of insights that transformation delivers.

AI will be a game-changer

BEYOND the analytic power derived from big data is an even greater step-change: artificial intelligence.

Already an increasing number of mundane business tasks are being automated, freeing up staff time to tackle more intimate customer issues. But this automation will be the tip of the iceberg of the problem-solving capability that emerges through AI over the next few years.

Advanced learning machines capable of working collaboratively with human business professionals to solve complex commercial problems are just around the corner.

As with big data, companies capable of taking the lead on AI developments will gain a huge competitive advantage.

It all comes back to the cloud

AT the heart of the digital transformation story – be it a focus on user experience, data, analytics or AI – is an inevitable migration to cloud services.

The cloud is an essential element of digital transformation because it offers the agility businesses need to scale up their data requirements.

With a cloud platform combined with a focus on data-led innovation, a business doesn’t have to worry about the constraints of its digital infrastructure but can instead focus on growth through customer insights.

A8 Saturday, November 30, 2019

Sports BusinessMirror

Editor: Jun Lomibao | mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph

30TH SOUTHEAST ASIAN GAMES

LET THE GAMES BEGIN! THE Filipino brand of world-class talent is expected to leave everyone in awe with a spectacle to remember.

By Ramon Rafael Bonilla

Fegi, Robert Seña and the TNT Boys are expected to entertain the thousands of spectators to attend the ceremony.

The Ramon Obusan Folkloric Group will perform a range of dances from traditional to modern hip-hop.

The organizers will keep it a running show that focuses on Filipino culture, with the costumes, stage design and presentation all inspired by local works.

Tasked as flag-bearers in the parade of delegations are Margielyn Didal, Meggie Ochoa, EJ Obiena, Eumir Felix Marcial and Kiyomi Watanabe—all Filipino stars in the field of sports.

Six legends led by Lydia de Vega, Bong Coo, Elma Muros, Paeng Nepomuceno and Mansueto “Onyok” Velasco will carry the SEA Games Federation flag.

There will be 11 Filipina beauty queens that will serve as muses for the participating nations, with Miss Universe 2015 Pia Wurtzbach assigned to the host nation.

There is a pre-show at 5 p.m, while the main performance starts at 7 p.m. Phisgoc has provided P2P buses from various locations in SM MOA Arena, Ayala Cloverleaf, Trinoma and SM City Clark to ferry spectators to and from the spectacle.

T

HE bashing, the flops, the negatives, what have you—all will just be part of forgotten memory when the gigantic Philippine Arena raises the curtain and rolls out the Filipino brand of world-class talent and leaves everyone in awe with a spectacle to remember.

With the party reaching delirious mode at the 55,000-seater indoor arena, the momentous lighting of the cauldron will be at the New Clark City in Capas, Tarlac, some 90 kilometers away from the epicenter of festivities where athletics and swimming will be played.

That’s what the organizers are envisioning after days of unfortunate events that challenged the host nation, a belief that somehow the grand opening ceremony will brush away the negativity in the air when the 30th Southeast Asian Games officially start on Saturday.

The Philippine Southeast Asian Games Organizing Committee revealed little about the program, but some leaks provided a glimpse of a massive effort to do the best opening ceremony of the Games ever.

“We don’t want to divulge the details because we want to surprise everyone. This will be historic,” Phisgoc COO Ramon Suzara said.

Lani Misalucha will be singing the Philippine National Anthem, and will be followed by song and dance productions.

Performers Apl.de.ap, Christian Bautista, Aicelle Santos, Jed Madela, Elmo Magalona, KZ Tandingan, Iñigo Pascual, Ana

PAL pilot, steward join campaign for gold medals

T WATCH THE GAMES FOR FREE!

F

REE tickets are now available for the public consumption after the Philippine Southeast Asian Games Organizing announced it is giving access to live matches after persistent calls from fans.

Fifty three of the 56 sports will be open free to fans— except for basketball, volleyball and football.

Venues that will require paid tickets are the Mall of Asia Arena in Pasay City for basketball, PhilSports Arena in Pasig City for volleyball and the Rizal Memorial Football Stadium and the Biñan Football Stadium for football.

In addition, the organizers heeded President Duterte’s order of distributing 10,000 tickets to the public for the closing ceremony at the 20,000-seat Athletics Stadium of the New Clark City.

“We will announce the mechanics. We don’t want to create hassle,” Phisgoc Chairman Alan Peter Cayetano said on Friday.

In a separate press conference, Phisgoc COO Ramon Suzara said they will give the tickets to the local government units.

“It is complimentary to the public but will be availed through the LGUs. We must give it to the LGUs for security reasons,” Suzara said.

There are 50 venues for the 56 sports across four clusters in Subic, Clark, Metro Manila and Southern Luzon and La Union. Ramon Rafael Bonilla

HE presence of all 11 competing nations in the 30th Philippine SEA Games was formally recognized on Friday morning during a simple flag-raising ceremonies held at the plaza of the Athletes Village at the New Clark City in Capas, Tarlac.

The delegations were welcomed by Athletes Village Mayor Arrey Perez, Bases Conversion and Development Authority vice president for Business Development, according to Team Philippines deputy chef de mission Stephen Fernandez.

All present and accounted for were the contingents from Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Vietnam, and the host Philippines, he said, adding that the colors of the respective

HE Philippines stunned Indonesia, 6-4.5, to secure advance to the gold medal play in the 4-6 High Polo event of the 30th Southeast Asian Games on Thursday at the Iñigo Zobel Polo Facility in Calatagan, Batangas.

Down 1-1.5 and 2-2.5, the national team took over, 4-3.5 score, before whipping up triumph.

The national team’s victory put them on top of Division A for a guaranteed silver medal. The Filipinos will face reigning champions Malaysia, who beat the hosts 8.5-5 earlier in the tournament, on Sunday.

Malaysia, meanwhile, advanced to the final after beating Indonesia, 11-7.5. The Philippines is composed of team captain Stefano Tuban, Gus Aguirre, Tomas Bitong and Miguel Lopez.

Polo opened hostilities in the country’s fourth hosting of the Games. Ryniel Berlanga

Victory on Subic sand

P

HILIPPINE Airlines is raising the country’s flag for all Filipino athletes, two of whom are PAL crew competing in separate events.

PAL Captain Ditto Nestor Dinopol not only flies the Airbus A320 airplane in his day job, but will also vie for medals in shooting, while flight steward Christopher Policarpo is part of the Philippine underwater hockey team in the 30th Southeast Asian Games.

Dinopol is a bemedalled practical shooter, having won two gold and two silver medals at the 43rd Southeast Asia Shooting Championship in August in Jakarta, Indonesia.

The sharpshooting pilot will aim for a hometown victory at the shooting event on December 3 at the Marine Corps Training Center in Fort Bonifacio, Taguig.

Policarpo, on the other hand, has been a member of different underwater hockey teams, winning medals at the Australian National Underwater Hockey Championships-MVP in 2018 and gold medal in 2019 in Perth.

He was also clinched silver in the Asian Underwater Hockey Championship in Jakarta 2015 and in Beijing 2017.

POLO GOLD IN SIGHT T

T PILOT Captain Ditto Nestor Dinopol shoots for the gold medal, while flight steward Christopher Policarpo holds his breath for a strong Philippine finish in the Games.

HE Philippines put debuted with a bang by beating Timor-Leste in men’s beach volleyball of the 30th Southeast Asian Games on Friday at the Subic Tennis Court.

Philippines Team 1 of Jaron Reuquinton and James Buytrago ripped their Timor-Leste counterpart Christian Jean and Robson Xavier in a dominant fashion, 21-13, 21-16.

The hosts’ Team 2 also displayed a stellar performance by routing Silvano Aduauo and Denyasno Bela, 21-7, 21-16.

With the victories, the men’s squad placed themselves ahead of Group A. The women’s teams of Sisi Rondina and Bernadeth Pons and Dzi Gervacio and Dji Rodriguez played against Indonesia late Friday. Ryniel Berlanga

SEA Games countries colors raised at AV New Clark City countries were raised in alphabetical order.

“Of course as the host, the Philippine was the last country to raise the national flag.”

“It was a very simple program with either the chief of mission or deputy chief of mission leading the respective delegations,” said Fernandez, who represented Philippine Sports Commission Chairman Butch Ramirez, the national team chef de mission. He bared that he showed up at the flag-raising rites together with some arnis athletes, who are already billeted at

the Village, and members of the medical staff.

“There was an exchange of tokens while Perez gave an inspirational talk, reminding everyone of maintaining the spirit of fair play and sportsmanship when the actual competition begins and urging everyone in making the SEA Games a success,” Fernandez recalled.

The event was held before the opening ceremonies of the 30th edition of the regional sports showcase on Saturday at the 50,000-seat Philippine Arena in Bocaue, Bulacan

before the SEAG goes full blast the next day.

“We expect a lot of athletes and officials to start streaming into the Athletes Village today,” said the deputy CDM, baring that aside from the aquatics and athletics squads other campaigners vying in neighboring Pampanga will also be quartered at the NCC Athletes Village. ”The men’s and women’s softball teams have begun moving in and the other athletes who will be seeing action in Pampanga will also have their quarters here.”

SEAG Federation adopts new pro-athlete policy

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HE SEA Games Federation Council Friday announced a new rule for the Philippine hosting of the 30th Southeast Asian (SEA) Games that unfolds on Saturday at the Philippine Arena in Bulacan.

SEA Games Executive Committee Chairman Celso Dayrit said that upon the initiative of SEA Games Federation and Philippine Olympic Committee President Abraham “Bambol” Tolentino, a bronze medal will be awarded even if there are only three countries entered in an event.

“The current rule is, if for instance in boxing, only three countries are entered in a certain weight category, only a gold and a silver medal are to be awarded. The third placer gets nothing,” Dayrit said.

Tolentino emphasized that the Games are supposed to be “about the athletes. So why penalize an athlete who sacrifices, trains and participates, places third and is deprived of a medal because other countries withdrew at the last minute? That’s not his fault.”

With support from all the member-countries, the

exemption from the current rule was sponsored by Prof. Charoen Watanasim of Thailand and approved unanimously.

CLEAR BAG POLICY TO maintain peace and order on all the sporting events, the Philippine Southeast Asian Games Organizing Committee (Phisgoc) set a Clear Bag policy for the spectators who will be watching at the game venues of the 30th SEA Games.

According to the committee, each person is limited to only one (1) plastic, vinyl or PVC bag, a transparent storage bag (which can be a 1-gallon freezer bag, Ziploc bag or similar), or a small strapless clutch that do not exceed 4.5” in height and 6.5” in width.

Other kinds of bags such as backpacks, fanny packs, suitcases, purses, or duffle bags are strictly prohibited.

Venue security has the right to search all carried items and confiscate any prohibited item upon entry.

MALAYSIA’S water polo team visits the Clark Museum and 4D Theater to learn the history of Clark as a former American military base.

Editor: Gerard S. Ramos • lifestylebusinessmirror@gmail.com

BusinessMirror

Saturday, November 30, 2019 A9

The best holiday gift for teenagers PRIMETIME

DINNA CHAN VASQUEZ @dinnachanvasquez jtnisay@gmail.com

I

F you’re looking for a gift for kids and teenagers and you’re feeling generous, the instax Mini 9 Craft Kit is a good idea. For P4,499, you get a Mini 9 camera, a pack of film and craft items that you can use when you flat-lay your prints. The kit comes in a retro tin box (this box reminds me of my lunch box when I was a child) that comes in five colors, each with a different design/message.

I remember when K-pop was very new in the Philippines, it was a thing for fans to go to concerts with their instax cameras in the hope that the idols would pick it up and take a selfie. There was a Super Junior concert where the group members did just that.

The instax Mini 9 allows you to photograph subjects up to 35 centimeter near with its close-up lens attachment. You can also calibrate your lighting with the brightness adjustment dial. The power source are two AA-size alkaline batteries.

The instax Mini 9 Craft Kit also includes wooden clips, two washi tapes and a set of fun stickers created in partnership with Craft Easy, a Filipino company that produces scrapbooking and art supplies.

“This is the season of giving. With instax, we want to encourage everyone not just to take but also to give. With this special bundle, you’ll not only get a great instax camera but craft items to put an imaginative

twist to your photos,” said Fujifilm Philippines President Ryo Nagaoka.

The instax Mini 9 is part of Fujifilm’s instax camera line. It is available in Flamingo Pink, Ice Blue, Lime Green, Cobalt Blue, Smoky White and the limitededition colors: Clear Pink, Clear Yellow and Clear Purple. The camera alone retails for only P3,999, and is sold at Fujifilm authorized dealers nationwide.

Meanwhile, buyers of Asus laptops are in for a treat as they will receive free cameras and other goodies for every purchase.

Among the instax models to be given away are the instax Mini 9 (worth P3,999) for the Classic Bundle, the sleek and cool instax Square SQ6 (P7,999) for the Style Bundle, and the stunning and handy instax Mini LiPlay (P9,999) for the Creator bundle.

The instax Mini 9 is one of the bestselling products in the instax lineup, while the instax Square SQ6 is the first analog camera that uses a square film format.

The instax LiPlay is a revolutionary hybrid product that not only takes stunning photos but also converts recorded sounds into a QR code which you can scan using your smartphone.

“We at instax pride ourselves as a brand that values the act of giving rather than taking. Asus shares the same drive that our company has, and so we’re very excited about this partnership. This collaboration comes at a perfect time as we recently launched our ‘Don’t just take, give’ campaign,” said Nagaoka.

“Instax aligns with our principles as a company, and we at Asus are thrilled to be collaborating with them. This partnership is a perfect way to create and share incredible memories to every Filipino, making this our biggest Christmas campaign yet,” said Asus Philippines Country Manager George Su.

Realme to open PHL flagship store in Iloilo

How to tell if your digital addiction is ruining your life

By Terri R. Kurtzberg Rutgers University Newark THE fear that digital distractions are ruining our lives and friendships is widespread.

To be sure, digital addiction is real. Consider the 2,600 times we touch our phones every day, our panic when we temporarily misplace a device, the experience of “phantom vibration syndrome” and how merely seeing a message alert can be as distracting as checking the message itself.

This can have real consequences. For example, other people do take it personally if you stop talking to them to answer a message. And taking a break from a task to look at your cell phone precludes deep thinking on whatever you were doing.

But this tells only part of the story. We need to also acknowledge that today’s technologies can make us more connected than ever before.

So how do we avoid the potential pitfalls while still reaping the benefits?

HOW SCREENS AFFECT OUR INTERACTIONS AS a researcher in the area of technology and

communications, I have spent nearly two decades looking at the ways in which interacting via screens is different from interacting in other ways, including face-to-face, on the phone and in writing.

My research group has produced study after study showing that people are more self-serving (that is, they lie more), more negative (for example, giving others lower feedback ratings) and less cooperative (more “looking out for No. 1” behavior) when they use digital means of communicating. And for children under five, there are serious concerns for brain development.

Our fears about the impact of increasing amounts of screen time on ourselves and our children involve three main areas: mental health, addiction and the level of engagement with what’s going on around us.

In all three, the risks are generally overblown.

Much has been made of the potential links between depression and cell phone use—especially in teenagers—but recent evidence seems to indicate that that link is tenuous at best.

As for addiction, the field of psychology has now recognized video game addiction as a genuine and

diagnosable problem. Stories from rehab centers for people whose lives have been consumed by this addiction suggest the phenomenon is real and the suffering can be quite genuine.

But this is rare compared with the numbers of people who play online games without serious consequences.

And in terms of engagement, despite growing amounts of time spent on screens, the vast majority of kids do still get educated, make friends and go on to lead productive lives.

A MORE CONNECTED WORLD

AS more and more of our interactions move away from the traditional face-to-face and into the online realm, I believe we must recognize that in some areas, richness and engagement may also be on the rise.

Colleagues can work together from afar, friends can keep in touch without restraint and grandparents can directly touch base with their grandkids without needing to schedule a visit or go through the parents.

Language changes as we interact in shorter bursts, allowing us to connect in less formal ways. Humor changes as we are able to add visuals—pictures, emojis, GIFs, memes—to our words. Even those online video games

GAME-CHANGING brand realme inaugurates its flagship concept store in the country on November 29. The opening of the store marks the brand’s first anniversary in the country, and comes at the heels of realme’s recent milestones, including a string of successful product launches and record-breaking offline and online sales.

Realme’s biggest offline store to date will be located in one of the brand’s biggest and most-active markets in the Philippines, Iloilo City, specifically at SM City Iloilo. It will house the brand’s complete lineup of smartphones, merchandise and accessories, including iconic cases and realme buds.

This milestone reflects the company’s continued efforts to grow its market in the Philippines. The expanding realme offline network now comprises 15 concept stores, 29 exhibits, 243 kiosks, 4,500 partner stores and 25 service centers nationwide.

“As more Filipinos seek real value offered by our smartphones, we at realme Philippines continue to expand our offline channels to make our products more accessible to more Filipinos. In just one year can be a portal to increased social interactions for some.

DO YOU HAVE A PROBLEM?

PERHAPS the best way to evaluate time spent with our phones is to ask two related questions.

First, what are you doing with the time you’re devoting to your phone, and is it consistent with your values and priorities?

If you feel that you and your kids are enjoying your screen time and not risking sleep, work or in-person interactions, you may not have much reason for concern.

To help with this task, tools and apps that can track your screen time and let you know where your attention is being directed—or even limit where it can go—are becoming more prevalent.

Secondly, what are your blind spots about where and how phone use might be limiting the rest of your life?

Most of us realize we shouldn’t use phones right before bed—or, even worse, when driving or crossing streets—and we know we should keep an eye on our kids and teenagers to ensure that they are building good habits both inside and outside the digital realm.

But we’re less clear on how our phones might be

since we launched here in the Philippines, we have been recognized as a leading smartphone brand in the country, thanks to our aggressive market expansion and communication initiatives—and, of course, the support of our Filipino fans. The opening of realme’s flagship store is another step toward the premiumization of our brand while still keeping to our promise of providing real value,” shared realme Philippines Marketing Director Austine Huang.

Realme now has 28 stores and four service centers across the Visayas region that includes the flagship store. The brand will be opening more kiosks, stores and service centers in the City of Love next year, drawing upon Iloilo City’s sustained growth, which makes it a pivotal market for brands catering to Western Visayas.

New users are welcome to join the realme community, the biggest and most active Facebook community for a smartphone brand. Members can get to know more about the brand and engage with the growing family of users in the Philippines through the group. Fans can share their experiences, ask for tips and tricks and even join exclusive activities. affecting our lives in other ways.

The latest research offers some lessons. For starters, we’re not as good as we think at multitasking: We generally give worse attention to both tasks when we try to do two things at once. Over time, people who do this constantly end up with greater error rates on tasks, perhaps linked to poorer working memories.

Even the mere presence of a phone can limit your engagement with work and your ability to build relationships with others.

FINDING THAT EVER-ELUSIVE BALANCE

ALL of this means that even though you may not need to worry about your phone use overall, there are still moments when you’d be wise to put your device out of sight and earshot. This will give you the best chance to think about complex tasks without interruption or to engage more fully with those around you.

Putting down our phones completely seems neither realistic nor desirable: Society has moved forward, phones in hand.

But choosing the moments where being phone-free is most valuable can help keep you on track.

A10 Saturday, November 30, 2019

BusinessMirror

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Grocery-carrying robots are coming. Do we need them?

By Matt O’Brien The Associated Press

B

OSTON—The first cargocarrying robot marketed directly to consumers is on sale this holiday season.

But how many people are ready to ditch their second car to buy a two-wheeled rover that can follow them around like a dog?

Corporate giants like Amazon, FedEx and Ford have already been experimenting with sending delivery robots to doorsteps. Now Piaggio, the Italian company that makes the Vespa scooter, is offering a stylish alternative to those blandly utilitarian machines— albeit one that weighs 50 pounds (23 kilograms) and costs $3,250.

It’s named the Gita (JEE’-tah) after the Italian word for a short, pleasurable excursion—the kind you might take to pick up some lacinato kale and gourmet cheese at the farmers market. Its creators have such trips in mind for the “handsfree carrier” that can hold produce and other objects as it follows its owner down a sidewalk.

“We’re trying to get you out into the world and connected to that neighborhood you decided to move to because it was so walkable,” said Greg Lynn, CEO of Piaggio’s tech-focused subsidiary, Piaggio Fast Forward.

Tech industry analysts are already declaring the Gita as doomed to fail unless it finds a more practical application, such as lugging tools around warehouses, hospitals or factory floors.

“That’s a lot of money for what is in effect just a cargo-carrying robot that’s going to carry your groceries,” said Forrester technology analyst J.P. Gownder.

On a recent November morning, Lynn was hunched over in a Boston waterfront park, pushing a button that triggered a Gita to “see” him with its cameras and sensors. Then came a musical whirring sound as the device—a squarish, bright red bucket with two oversized wheels—rose up and signaled it was ready for a neighborhood stroll.

A young boy in a stroller pointed excitedly. Another pedestrian asked to try it, and playfully shouted “ah!” as it swerved around, keeping in pursuit as she switched directions.

The Gita doesn’t require a phone or intrusive people-tracking technology, such as facial recognition or GPS.

“It basically just locks onto you and tracks you,” said Piaggio Fast Forward’s other cofounder, Jeffrey Schnapp.

Other start-ups like Starship Technologies have a more conventional

A CARGO-CARRYING robot called the Gita sits near a waterfront park in Boston. A subsidiary of Italian automaker Piaggio designed the machine to follow its owner carrying groceries and other items. AP

business plan for their own delivery robots. The company charges a delivery fee starting at $1.99 if you order its rovers to bring you a Starbucks coffee or a lunch from Panda Express.

So far, the best habitat to find Starship’s six-wheelers are relatively confined spaces such as college campuses; the University of Houston and the University of Wisconsin-Madison rolled them out this fall. The robots, which look like oversized ice chests on wheels, can carry up to 20 pounds (9 kilograms).

“I love them. I think they’re so cute!”

University of Houston freshman Sadie

Garcia said as one of the machines rolled up with a bagel sandwich she’d ordered.

She said she was so cold she didn’t want to leave her dorm.

Starship Cofounder Ahti Heinla said his San Francisco start-up once looked at selling the machines directly to consumers, but dropped the idea after realizing it would have to price them at more than $3,000.

Amazon is experimenting with a similar-looking machine that delivers retail goods in a handful of US neighborhoods. FedEx is testing its own delivery rover in partnership with Pizza Hut, Walmart, Target and Walgreens. Ford

has showed off a gangly two-legged robot to carry items to homes. So far, none are as far along as Starship, which has hundreds of its machines already in service.

While Forrester’s Gownder isn’t impressed with the Gita, he’s bullish about delivery robots of the Starship variety because their autonomy will help save labor costs. Gownder said it’s more of a question of whether ground-based rovers or aerial delivery drones will prove more successful.

The wheeled cargo robots that have already made it out into the wild have significant limitations.

Starship’s machines still require

plenty of manual supervision to load them with food orders. They rely on remote pilots to troubleshoot navigation problems. Customers also have to check a phone app to tell the vehicle where to go and to unlock the bin once it arrives.

The Gita, meanwhile, might still be impractical for many people. It favors paved environments that are dense enough to have stores in walking distance, but not so dense that the machines get lost in the crowd.

And anyone who is simply looking to pull home groceries without heavy lifting can find durable wagons online for less than $100.

Sprout offers digital payroll solution to SMEs for free

By Rizal Raoul S. Reyes SPROUT Solutions recently launched its Payroll for Small Businesses for free at the Department of Information and Communications Technology’s (DICT) Tech Advantage summit last November 21.

Patrick Gentry, cofounder and CEO of Sprout Solutions, said the Philippine-based Sprout Solutions offers software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution to help businesses through their suite of innovative human resource (HR) and payroll management solutions.

Moreover, he said Payroll for Small Businesses is part of Sprout’s advocacy for improving businesses especially the small and medium enterprises in the Philippines by giving them access to solutions that will help them grow.

Gentry pointed out that it is always a challenge for SMEs to have sufficient

resources for an efficient process payroll, which is why Sprout is offering their payroll module for free until they are ready to avail themselves of the full range of services.

“Sprout has always been about impacting Filipino lives by improving business, and the way we want to do this now is by giving smaller businesses a way to focus more on strategic thinking,” Gentry said in a press statement.

“We were also quite small not too long ago, and we understand how tough it is to handle more people, which is why we decided to offer Payroll for Small Businesses without charging until a client grows beyond 50 people,” Gentry added.

According to the 2018 List of Establishments of the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), medium-sized and smaller enterprises make up 99.52 percent of registered businesses in the

Philippines. Many SMEs simply lack the manpower to efficiently process payroll while allowing their HR departments to focus toward strategic responsibilities like skill and capacity building.

He said Sprout has been consistent about helping businesses solve problems with compliance. Avoiding noncompliance can bog down budding businesses because of the time and effort it takes to carry out the iterative tasks of payroll and timekeeping. “This problem is even more critical for smaller businesses that need to focus resources on operational concerns rather than administrative tasks,” he said.

He said users will need only five to 10 days to get Payroll for Small Businesses up and running. He added users can expect support throughout the entire onboarding process, and any time that help is needed with the payroll process. A mixed team of

Prince2-certified project managers, expert payroll advisers, and product support staff are ready to address any concerns regarding both the software and payroll.

Aside from the Web-based sign-up and verification, which allows users to initiate the process from the comfort of their own homes, Sprout reaches out to provide basic setup instructions and free payroll training. Sprout also provides a self-onboarding tool, which walks new users through the software’s interface, and access to an extensive knowledge base for both the software and Philippine payroll requirements.

For more visual learners, users can opt to use Sprout Academy, a learning management solution which provides a more comprehensive learning experience.

“We’re there every step of the way to help out with anything related to the

payroll process,” said Gentry. “The way we help businesses isn’t just about giving them the tools to work with; we also want to help them learn how to use those tools,” he added.

Sprout’s payroll solution offers businesses the ability to easily overcome the compliance problem by automating the payroll process, including automatic generation of over 20 government reports and calculation of 32 different pay rates. Business can leverage the technology to navigate tricky regulations that stifle an HR department’s ability to focus on enriching the employee knowledge pool.

“We’ve always focused on compliance because it’s such a huge weight on small businesses,” said Gentry.

“We want to see HR departments focus on other important value-adding tasks, not just encoding spreadsheets over and over again.”

BusinessMirror

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Saturday, November 30, 2019 A11

Apple, Disney and Netflix’s streaming battle isn’t winner-take-all

By Amanda Lotz

Queensland University of Technology

W

ITH the recent launch of Apple TV Plus and the imminent arrival of Disney Plus, the video landscape has never looked so competitive.

These services join a crowded marketplace of subscription streaming services that includes Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime Video—with more to come next year. For viewers, the proliferation of services means more choice in shows and services.

For the companies, it means increased competition for talent and escalating budgets.

Although many publications have described the situation as “streaming wars,” these companies have different goals for each of their video services.

We have been studying the recent boom in subscription video streaming to understand the implications for audiences and industry. Contrary to all this reporting, we find little evidence of a “streaming war.”

In fact, many of these services are playing different games.

DIVERSE STRATEGIES THE major streaming services—both old and new—all have different catalogs, pricing and strategies. While all services seek viewers’ time and attention, in other respects they are different beasts.

Take Disney Plus. Disney’s strong suit is kids, family and its popular Marvel and Star Wars content. It has also invested in a few original series, such as The Mandalorian, a Star Wars spin-off.

But unlike Netflix, Disney Plus doesn’t offer a full-service entertainment package. With its lowball pricing of $7 per month compared with $13 for Netflix’s most popular plan, Disney Plus is pitched as a service to have alongside Netflix, rather than a direct replacement.

Similarly, Apple TV Plus—which debuted on November 1 for $4.99 a month—has a tiny catalog of highprofile shows and stars, such as Oprah and Jennifer Aniston. Compared with Netflix’s library of 5,000 titles, Apple TV Plus is a minnow. Its purpose is to add value and glamor to Apple device purchases, not to replace another service.

In other words, neither Disney Plus nor Apple TV Plus is likely to be a

“Netflix killer” anytime soon.

NETFLIX IS GLOBAL ANOTHER key difference between Netflix and services such as Disney Plus, Hulu and Apple TV Plus is the amount of global content in the former’s library.

Today, 6 out of every 7 new Netflix subscribers live outside the United States. The global market is essential for Netflix’s future growth.

To support this endeavor, it is spending considerably on producing shows outside the US, and this original content is available to subscribers worldwide. Of course, not every viewer is interested in series produced elsewhere, but Netflix is making the bet that sci-fi fans will turn up for a good adventure whether it is produced in the US or Brazil.

In contrast, Disney and Apple are following a more traditional US export model of media globalization.

ROOM FOR OTHER PLAYERS? MANY questions remain about the future of Hulu now that its owners—Disney and Comcast—are launching other services.

Hulu provides a distinct service as a source of current series produced for Disney and NBC. Viewers that are cutting cable and satellite service—a trend that has increased in the last year—may find Hulu a good replacement.

And more change is coming.

Comcast announced a service called Peacock for next year. Peacock will draw heavily from the library of shows Comcast owns as the corporate parent of NBC and Universal. It will be free to

Comcast subscribers and, possibly, to everyone.

Meanwhile, AT&T will launch HBO Max—the new direct-to-consumer portal for HBO content, some original series and titles from the Warner Bros. library, such as Friends.

WHAT WINNING MEANS IN other words, the question of who will “win” the streaming war is more complicated than it appears.

Rather than one service to rule them all, there may be many winners because most are playing different games. Netflix is the only “pure” subscription videoon-demand service—meaning its only business is streaming video. It wins when viewers subscribe or keep subscribing.

Apple and Amazon are playing another

game entirely. Apple wins if you buy a new iPhone, and Amazon wins if you start buying more from its online retail service.

Similarly, Comcast and AT&T are likely angling to increase internet subscribers.

Disney also wants viewers to pay to subscribe, but it has other ambitions, too. Launching its own streaming service allows Disney to collect valuable data about who is watching and what they like.

This kind of data is useful for driving viewers to theaters as Elsa and Anna return in Frozen 2, and enticing families to buy lots of stuffed toys and maybe even visit its theme parks.

In other words, this is not a single war so much as a collection of different media and technology businesses that are using video streaming to accomplish different goals.

Lighting up the way to smart homes SIGNIFY, the world leader in lighting, launched Philips Hue, the personal smart lighting system that allows people to control their lights in their home or from anywhere in the world using a smart device. Filipinos can now experience light in a whole new way through intuitive technologies, combined with high-quality LED lighting.

Choosing from a spectrum of more than 16 million colors, Philips Hue lets you personalize your home lighting experience with custom settings and program timers to create the perfect ambiance for any occasion.

Philips Hue lets you create the perfect ambiance at home with your scenes and routines—all throughout your day. Here are just a few ways how:

n Kick-start your day. Philips Hue lights can serve as your gentle wake-up call in the morning by automatically increasing brightness to ease you into the day.

n Command at your fingertips. Don’t worry about leaving your lights turned on. You can control your Philips Hue lights from anywhere, just with the app.

n Let your lights welcome you home. Set your lights to welcome you home after a long day out by enabling the geofencing feature on the Philips Hue app.

You can also set the right mood with light scenes like a tropical twilight or Tokyo lights, or add a customized scene to your liking.

n Sit back and chill. Set up a truly immersive entertainment experience by syncing your lights with music, videos and games with Philips Hue. You can also easily communicate through voice commands with Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Nest and Apple HomeKit, and even synchronize the smart lights with

Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube.

n Set to snooze. Tell your go-to smart assistant like Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant, “good night,” and your lights will automatically dim to prepare you for a comfortable sleep.

The Philips Hue system can do all of these and more through the Hue White and Color Ambiance range. The system provides an entire spectrum of 16 million colors that can be adjusted to fit any moment of the day— whether it’s a quiet personal moment or a get-together with loved ones.

The Hue Starter Kit includes three Hue White and Color Ambiance bulbs, and a bridge that allows you to add up to 50 Philips Hue light bulbs, and up to 12 switches and other accessories through the Philips Hue app.

“The future belongs to connected living, with smart homes being a key driver today. We at Signify endeavor to deliver a human centric approach to our innovations and Philips Hue is a perfect example as it can be the first step to turn any home into a smart home, creating never-before experiences with lighting that can be customized around your lifestyle. Filipinos are known to be quick-adopters of technology, and we are excited to introduce the cuttingedge Philips Hue system to help usher in an emerging technological trend—the rise of smart homes,” said Jagan Srinivasan, country leader of Signify Philippines.

Aside from Alexa and Google Assistant, Philips Hue is also known to have the most extensive compatibility with other smart-home platforms like Apple HomeKit, Samsung SmartThings, Microsoft Cortana, Bosch and Logitech.

The new Philips Hue range also features dual Bluetooth connectivity and Zigbee technology for an expanded smart lighting experience.

Get Philips Hue in select PowerMac, Switch, iStore, Nifty, Urban Gadgets, Infomax Glorietta, Abenson Global City and online at the Philips Lighting Official store on Lazada.

Carousell Philippines holds forum on technology THE country’s leading classifieds platform, Carousell Philippines held a forum on technology recently where its power sellers had the opportunity to learn the latest trends in the digital world.

They also got tips on effective ways to boost their profiles and listings, as well as photography tips to help them sell their products better. The forum featured

presentations by partner-enablers, including Lalamove, MrSpeedy, GCash, Tagcash and Gopher. In photo are (from left) Carousell Philippines Business Development Manager April Pascual, Head of General Classifieds Tina Bautista, Country Trade Marketing Manager Ralph Garcia and Commercial Strategy Manager Hazel Marie Ojeda.

BusinessMirror

A12 Saturday, November 30, 2019

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From the living room to your hand THE TECHNIVORE ED UY

wherelseduy@gmail.com

E

VERYONE knows TCL as a TV brand (or some other home appliance) but did you know that before TCL stood for “The Creative Life,” their initials originally meant “Telephone Communication Limited”?

But even though the Chinese electronics company is behind Blackberry and budget brand Alcatel (anyone still remember their “safeguard” phone?), it never had its self-brand smartphone—until now.

Having found global success in the affordable smart TV market, TCL is now stepping out of the shadows to release its own phones. Embodying the brand’s new “Display Greatness” philosophy, TCL takes its renowned display pedigree from the living room and brings it into a mobile form factor.

Meet the TCL Plex, which you have to admit isn’t the most exciting name for a smartphone, and sounds more like you are going on that freeway to La Union instead.

Highway jokes aside, and with a very saturated midrange market dominated by other Chinese brands, does the TCL Plex have what it takes to make people notice the brand?

The TCL Plex flaunts a triple-lens camera setup, uses a tried-and-tested processor, a dedicated display processor, surprisingly premium looks, and a few other little tricks that make it an interesting phone—on paper, that is, but how does it fare in real-world use?

We’ve been using the TCL Plex for the past couple of weeks, and here’s what we have to say about TCL’s appetizer for the smartphone market.

BUILD AND DESIGN

AESTHETICALLY, the TCL Plex has no special features—no pop-ups, sliders, or fins that have become common in other phones of its price range. Instead, the TCL Plex relies on a premium build that combines metal and real glass, not “glasstic.” Its slim, compact frame comes with a dual-side curved glossy glass body and 3D holographic finishing so the phone always feels premium in-hand. The Plex comes in two nature-inspired colors—Obsidian Black and Opal White—created using innovative nano-laser etching technology and nano-vacuum coating for a futuristic shine.

Overall, the build quality is surprisingly nice and the Plex feels a lot more expensive than its P15,990 price tag. Weighing at 192 grams, the phone is a bit heavy but in a reassuringly sturdy kind of way, rather than just bulky. It’s comfortable to hold but due to its size, I suggest you use both hands when operating the phone or you could attach one of those “phone rings” to make sure you don’t accidentally drop it.

Located on the back is a perfectly aligned triple camera setup with a dual single-tone LED flash on each side, and accented by horizontal stripe that reminds me of the Huawei Mate 10 series. I like the camera layout because it makes the Plex look unique and easily recognizable, but I do think the positioning is just a bit too high and it’s easy to cover the lens when holding the phone horizontally.

TCL opted for the traditional fingerprint sensor at the back just below the camera. It’s easy to locate, but sadly, its slow and takes a half second to unlock your phone. Not a deal breaker but definitely needs to be improved. There’s face unlock as well if you’d prefer that option.

Like the Huawei Nova 5T, there is a hole punch or a dot on the upper left of the screen, which—in another moment of uninspired naming—TCL is calling the “Dotch”...I guess the other option was “Hotch,” so let’s just leave that there and move on, shall we.

DISPLAY GREATNESS

AS the brand is renowned for the quality of its displays, and Display Greatness is its slogan, I was really expecting a lot from the Plex screen. Thankfully, it does not disappoint and has one of the best LCD displays in a smartphone. The Plex has a huge 6.53-inch LCD display and 1080 x 2340 resolution (395 ppi), conforming to the 19.5:9 standard, with a screen-to-body ratio of 90 percent. I just wish it could be a little more brighter.

TCL has also thrown in a few extras to make the display stand out from the competition. Equipped with a dedicated display engine, it features cutting-edge color

accuracy thanks to TCL NxtVision. Like in its TVs, colors on the TCL Plex’s screen are intensified with a 6-axis color enhancement for radiant images and edges are honed with 2D edge enhancement for sharper pictures and visual contrasts. The Plex also has a unique SDR to HDR real-time conversion feature, which acts on the display output to upconvert all SDR content (most of it) to HDR for the display and improve the visual fidelity of the majority of content (video, games, pictures) on your smartphone.

To protect your eyes from strain and ensure the best display clarity constantly, the TCL Plex includes several special modes—Adaptive Tone, which automatically adapts display brightness and adjusts color temperature; Reading Mode, which offers a paper-like reading experience; and Eye Comfort Mode, which reduces eyestrain by removing 66 percent of harmful blue light emitted from the screen.

In short, budget media bingers won’t have anything to complain about when using the TCL Plex when consuming their favorite content. I also have to mention that this NXTVision technology is promising and could be even more stunning on an AMOLED screen—I just hope we don’t have to wait too long.

TRIPLE CAMERAS WITH LOW LIGHT VIDEO

IN the era of 48MP and 64MP midrange shooters, the TCL Plex is a decent contender with a few camera tricks. The TCL Plex has a 48MP Sony IMX582 main shooter, a 16MP secondary wide-angle lens with 123-degree field of vision, and a third camera which gives you a dedicated night-vision camera, capable of night-vision video instead of telephoto.

As expected, outdoor and well-lit shots are great, but the Plex starts to struggle indoors and not so well-lit environments resulting in a lot of noise and loss in detail.

You can use Super Night Mode, which boosts color and brightness, but I would have preferred if it had a timer which shows you how long you have to hold it steady. I’ve managed to take some great night photos comparable to those shot by its pricier rivals, but unless you have steady hands, I would advise using a tripod when using Super Night Mode.

Portrait shots also need improvement in separating your subject from the background blur.

There’s beauty mode but instead of having separate sliders for adjustments, you only have the option to turn it on or off (and the change is barely noticeable).

There is a Pro mode which allows you to tweak all the settings but auto mode works well with the help of AI.

As for selfies, the Plex has a 24MP front camera that captures accurate shots, so if you hate those beauty modes that make you look like an escapee from Madam Tussauds, you’ll love the Plex selfie cam.

subscribers (www.pldt.com.ph/speedboost).

These special upgrades will boost speeds of subscribers up to twice the speed of their current plan and will let them enjoy unlimited, uninterrupted video streaming, lag-free gaming, and seamless browsing at home.

With these upgrades, Plan 6299 subscribers will enjoy 300 Mbps (from 250 Mbps), while Plan 4299 subscribers will experience up to 150 Mbps (from 120 Mbps).

On the other hand, Plan 2899 subscribers will double their speeds to enjoy up to 100 Mbps (from 50 Mbps), while subscribers of Plan 1899, Plan 1699 and Plan 1299 will experience up to 30 Mbps, 20 Mbps and 10 Mbps, respectively.

These latest round of speed boosts is meant to empower the increasing digital lifestyle of Filipino families, according to Butch Jimenez, head of consumer business, PLDT Home Group.

PLDT Home is the Philippines’s fastest fixed Internet service in 2019, according to global Internet testing and analysis leader Ookla. PLDT Home Fibr remains as the most powerful broadband suited for households as the company’s network Fiber-tothe-Home (FTTH) technology has reached 6.7 million homes, passed as of end-March 2019. In a report based on a customer-initiated Speedtest among 25.2 million users in the Philippines, Ookla said PLDT posted a Speed Score of 20.44, with top

HONOR Mobile (www.hihonor.com) is on a roll this year: Just weeks after announcing the expected arrival of the 9X in the Philippines, the company confirms another gadget to debut this month—the Honor 20 Lite. The newest smartphone from the brand boasts of AI support to capture photos in outstanding detail and clarity at any time of day, through features like Ultra-Wide Photography, Super Night Shot and 32MP Beauty Selfie.

The “32MP Selfie Master” gives photo enthusiasts full control over the lighting and vibrancy of images and over 500+ AI-recognized scenarios to help achieve that professional-grade photo. The face shots featured here is how portraits look like when captured with the new Honor 20 Lite.

PERFORMANCE AND UI

THE TCL Plex has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 675, Adreno 612 graphics, 6GB of DRAM, 128GB of UFS 2.1 storage, and support for microSD cards up to 256GB. The Snapdragon 675 is used by a lot of other midrange phones and, as well as some other phones with a higher price tag. It’s a tried and trusted processor that will not lag or disappoint, whether you are watching videos, browsing your social-media feed, doing a few tasks at once or playing games. Just don’t be too ambitious with the higher video settings, keep the games at medium settings and everything will work fine.

It’s powered by a 3820 mAh battery that can last you an entire day of normal use, and has Quick Charge 3.0 support which means you can get a 50 percent charge in just 32 minutes.

The Plex comes with Android Pie that’s been dressed up with the TCL UI. I like the UI because it looks clean and there’s not much bloatware pre-installed, and you can organize the applications by function, name, label or icon color category. Unfortunately, in terms of customizing looks, you only have a couple of theme choices, so you may want to install a different launcher.

New Honor device to arrive soon in PHL

NO need for ring lights with the 32MP Selfie Master of Honor 20 Lite.

PLDT SPEED UPGRADES

WITH Christmas just a few weeks away, PLDT has rolled out its biggest free speed upgrades as a gift to its Home Fibr

download speeds of 51.36 Mbps and top upload speeds of 54.22 Mbps.

PLDT has rolled out the country’s most extensive fixed and wireless network infrastructure which now has 259,000 kms of fiber-optic cables designed to support the Filipinos’ growing use of fixed and mobile data.

Honor 20 Lite uses AI Backlighting Imaging Technology and 32MP ISO-enhanced lens to recreate the natural look and keep your frame focused on your composition, despite disruptive lights. The phone also has a 17mm ultra wide-angle lens that allows for full-body portraits and awe-inspiring landscape shots.

Packaged in a 3D color gradient body that gleams as it moves, this new phone will draw your eyes to the vibrant offerings that are soon to hit the market.

Globe, ABS-CBN Foundation to offer toll-free calls to Bantay Bata #163 for all Globe customers FROM left: Globe Chief Commercial Officer Albert de Larrazabal, ABS-CBN Foundation Inc. Managing Director Susan Bautista-Afan, ABS-CBN Foundation Inc. Program Director Jing CastañedaVelasco and Globe Business Senior Vice President Peter Maquera

GLOBE and ABS-CBN Foundation Inc. have joined forces to advocate for the health and safety of all Filipino children by offering toll-free calls to Bantay Bata #163 helpline for all Globe and TM mobile phone users.

Through the recent signing of a memorandum of agreement, the two parties will be able to strengthen the efforts of Bantay Bata in protecting disadvantaged and at-risk children through a nationwide network of social services, such as rescue and rehabilitation, training and advocacy on child abuse prevention, rehabilitation of families in crisis, educational scholarships, community outreach, and medical and dental missions.

By making Bantay Bata #163 toll-free for all Globe and TM customers, it will become easier and safer to report, rescue and rehabilitate sick and abused children. Dialing the helpline also means hope for Filipino children and their families who are suffering in silence due to child abuse.

Currently, children and youth in the Philippines

continue to face huge challenges. According to last year’s report on the Situation Analysis of Children in the Philippines, 2 in 3 children experienced physical violence, 2 in 5 from psychological violence, 1 in 4 from sexual violence, and 2 in 3 from peer violence. Worse, violence against children often takes place at home.

“The ABS-CBN Foundation Inc. is happy to connect with Globe to help in creating swifter communication for the Bantay Bata program. By making #163 toll-free, it will be easier for more concerned citizens to report child abuse right away. The installation of Globe Prepaid WiFis in all Bantay Bata regional offices will also help change the way we get updates, making it easier to coordinate in various areas and offices,” says Jing Castañeda-Velasco, program director of Bantay Bata 163.

“Globe has been leading the Philippines to become a digital nation while building ecosystems benefiting individuals, families and businesses. Globe Business, for

instance, has revolutionized enterprises by making them digitally accessible to their customers through the toll-free hot line solution. Now, the same technology that we offer to companies can be used to protect Filipino children against all forms of violence,” said Albert de Larrazabal, Globe chief commercial officer. “We are glad to work with ABS-CBN Foundation, and we are one with them in the vision to build a safe Philippines and protect the youth by making Bantay Bata #163 accessible through our network for free.”

Globe will provide connectivity and communication support to the Bantay Bata Children’s Village and their regional offices—such as The Children’s Village in Norzagaray, Bulacan and Bantay Bata Regional Offices in Laguna, Cebu, Iloilo, Bicol, Negros, Zamboanga, Davao— where rescued Bantay Bata Hotline 163 kids are taken.

Aside from Bantay Bata 163, Globe has also partnered with Sagip Kapamilya, providing relief goods to affected families during disasters.

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If you have any information / objection to the above mentioned application/s, please communicate with the Regional Director thru Employment Promotion and Workers Welfare (EPWW) Division with Telephone No. 400-6011.

ATTY. SARAH BUENA S. MIRASOL REGIONAL DIRECTOR

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 30, 2019

COVER STORY

ELIZA CHAWI AND THE ART OF CORDILLERA WEAVING WORKSHOP

CULTURE

FICTION

PESSOA AND THE DISQUIET OF LITERATURE

ANYARE MAKES HISTORY LESSONS BORING NO MORE

THE LAST DANCE

BusinessMirror

Saturday, November 30, 2019 3

COVER STORY

Eliza Chawi and the art of Cordillera weaving

K

Story & photos by Dave Leprozo Jr.

EEPING a tradition alive kept her family from want. Now Eliza Chawi, 92, is the oldest weaver of traditional Kankanaey cloth in the Cordilleras. With a family of six to clothe and feed, Eliza decided to take the long bus ride to Baguio City in 1969—a good one-day ride along a dusty and rough road from Halsema Highway in Mailgcong, Bontoc Mt.Province.

She was looking for a job, to solve the problems of those times—making a living, suppor ting a fami ly, quotidian things. What she found was an endeavor that met her needs, and those of her family—as well as kept alive the traditional weaving designs, methods and practices that define the textiles made in the Cordilleras.

Luck and weaving

CHAWI is the oldest weaver from a village known for their traditional Kankanaey weaving skills passed on from generation to generation to this day. Luck was on Chawi’s side.

Fondly called Manay by her fellow weavers and close friends, Chawi was able to land a weaving job at Easter Weaving, a famous textile business in Baguio City that had been established in 1908. Easter Weaving advocates the Cordilleras’ traditional weaving and, over the years, grew into the place to visit and shop for traditional Cordillera woven fabric, designer clothes, the Cordillera design table, woven bed linens, wood carvings and anything Cordilleran—all under one roof.

A fter t wo years, Chaw i decided to br ing her fami ly of si x to Bag uio Cit y leav ing her

husband behind to tend their far m in Ma ligcong. T hat was in 1972.

Since her early years of working at Easter Weaving, Chawi was considered the eldest weaver. She was born on May 4.1927, and her years earned her a place in the weaving community, where she has continued to share her knowledge of weaving with younger weavers—thus preserving the ancient knowledge through more modern times.

Easter Weaving is run by the Anglican Church, and it is an endeavor that pays good wages to its artisans—from the weavers who are their mainstay to sub-contracted wood carvers, silversmiths, trinket makers, and souvenir suppliers.

ELIZA CHAWI weaving one of her favorite designs: the Kankanaey traditional design known as the “kulibangbang.”

Design for education

BEYOND supporting her children with a stable weaving job, C haw i ’s weav ing work augmented her husband ’s income from farming in Maligcong and the Chawi couple was able to support their brood of six, so they could go to school. Easter School, also located within the Ea ster Weav i ng compou nd , provides subsidies to schoolchildren whose parents work at Easter Weaving.

Continued on page 5

ANNA CHAWI proudly displays traditional Kankanaey fabric produced at the Easter School: Varicolored kulibangbang butterflies, and the sinan-bituin set in deep yellow to mimic stars.

BusinessMirror

Saturday, November 30, 2019 5

Continued from page 4 According to a research paper titled, “Weaving Symmetry of the Philippine Northern Kankana-ey” by Nathaniel A. Baylas IV and Teofina A. Rapanut in 2012 for the University of the Philippines Baguio, weaving is an ancient practice in the highlands of the Cordilleras: “[W]eaving according to unpublished archeological field reports ‘emerged’ in the second millennium B.C. in the archipelago now known as the Philippines. This was supported by conical and biconical spindle whorls found in Peñablanca, Cagayan, northeast Luzon.”

T he same research paper noted that the textile designs are informed by the agricultural nature of the Cordilleras, with “design patterns associated with rice cultivation and its attend ant bel ief system and religious practices.” Traditionally, Baylas and Rapanut wrote, weaving was an activity Kankanaey women “used to do after farming.”

Traditional geometric designs for Cordillera cloths include v- and x-shaped tiktiko, d iamond-shaped matmata, sopo shaped like f lowers and kulibangbang that resemble butterflies.

The tiktiko and matmata, the UP Baguio researchers found, represent “abundance, reverence, awe and high regard” for whatever these designs may stand for. The x-shapes, they posit, resemble the traditional mortars where sun-dried rice is pounded prior to threshing.

The diamond matmata may represent the tapered grains of rice that the people of the Mountain Province plant on their ancient rice terraces. They may also represent eyes, and are “expressive of wealth and abundance.”

These textiles are traditionally used for blankets, or ules, which are used to cover the upper body; waistbands called wakes or bagket; and loincloths called wanes and headcloths or bedbed, as well as wrap-around tapis skirts.

Chawi’s constant advice to the youths she meets is said in Ilocano, rather than her native Kankanaey, Ilocano being more widely spoken and understood among the folk of the Mountain Province and any given tribal language: “Masapol ket ageskwela ka. Nu awan ti ammum haan ka

ANNA CHAWI proudly shows off handwoven Kankanaey fabric produced at Easter Weaving: The kina-ew mortar and pestle. nga mangan (it’s a must for you to go school. If you don’t get an education, you go hungry).”

G i v e n t h e o p p o r t u n it y, Chawi would have pursued a formal education herself. “Nu awan adal mu agbunag ka bato (No education means you end up

doing manual labor),” she said.

Love of her craft

A F T ER 3 4 yea rs of loy a l ly working for Easter Weaving, Chaw i had to retire, some thing the Labor Law provides f o r. R e t i r e m e nt , h o w e v e r,

does not stop her love for the traditional weaving that was her life’s cause: “Sanay ak sin min uuubra.” She prefers to keep doing what she loves to do rather than sitting around with nothing to do. Such is the way of elders in tribal commu-

nities. Their role shifts from worker to teacher, their job to pass their knowledge on to the youngsters who have yet to learn and build the skills their elders have in abundance.

Despite her lack of formal schooling, Chawi’s rich skill sets for making the organic Cordillera cloth sold at Easter Weaving helped her provide for and raise six children, all of whom have families of their own now. Her hands wove the dreams of her ancestors and community into a livelihood that provided her children with a very real—and extremely practical—education.

Apo Chawi is proud to say that her grandchildren have become professionals. One of them is Anna Chawi, who also learned the ancient artisan, and postfarm work, skills of Cordillera weaving. She is now part of the sales staff at Easter Weaving.

After her retirement from Easter Weaving, Apo Chawi happily runs her own textile weaving business out of her Baguio City home. At 92, her hands are still busy weaving and passing on the skills she has spent a lifetime learning and honing in a lifelong process of learning and teaching that defies the concept of idle retirement.

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BusinessMirror

Saturday, November 30, 2019 7

THE WORKSHOP

Pessoa and the disquiet of literature

L

By Joel Pablo Salud

ARGELY unknown, and who described his face as thin, inexpressive, “betrays no intelligence, no intensity, nothing whatever to make it stand out from the stagnant tide of other faces,” the moustachioed Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) once grumbled against his day job as a bookkeeper.

He spent the rare moments where he can daydream imagining himself “free forever of Rua dos Douradores (a narrow two-lane street in Lisbon, Portugal packed with several floors of apartment units), my boss Vasques, of Mereira the book-keeper, of all the other employees, the errand boy, the post boy, even the cat”.

He found it a burden to eke out a living, to work for another when “My soul is a hidden orchestra; I know not what instruments, what fiddlestrings and harp, drum and tambours I sound and clash inside myself.

All I hear is the symphony.”

One can feel the depths of his depression when reading captions in his journal, The Book of Disquiet published by Serpent’s Tail Classics in 1991: “I am the outskirts of some nonexistent town, the longwinded prologue of an unwritten book.

I’m nobody, nobody. I don’t know how to feel, think or love. I’m a character in a novel as yet unwritten, hovering in the air and undone before I’ve even existed, amongst the dreams of someone who never quite managed to breath life into me […]

“My soul is a black maelstrom, a great madness spinning about a vacuum, the swirling vast ocean around a hole in a void, and in the waters, more like whirlwinds than waters, floating images of all I ever saw or heard in the world: houses, faces, books, boxes, snatches of music and fragments of voices, all caught up in a sinister, bottomless whirlpool. And I, I myself, am the center that exists only because the geometry of the abyss demands it.”

I included Pessoa’s experience because it reflects my own

several decades back, and a thousand other would-be writers who needed a day job to survive. Life as we know it, apparently, is not amenable to the crafting of literature. It always stands in the way of creation, the imagination, our moments of daydreaming. Life infringes on our stories and poems without remorse, thereby leaving most would-be writers feeling incomplete as the day wears on.

I started writing sometime in my early teens. Those poor excuses for poems I penned in the wee hours did much to awaken in me a new perspective of the world. I was too sensitive as a child to leave what I see and feel inside of me largely unwritten.

By the time they threw me out of college, I was already in the middle of crafting my first haul of fictional stories.

Without a university diploma, I had little choice but to leap from one odd job to the other to make ends meet. As messenger.

As office help. A janitor. A stevedore for a meat company. A miserable failure as a seller of encyclopedias in a country who refuses to read beyond a maximum of twenty words.

In the middle of hustling for cash to bring home to my two lovely kids, I stole the time to read and write. Never left the house without a book, a notebook and pen in hand. I wrote my stories and those poor excuses for poetry as a stevedore in the thick of a two- to threehour ride to Metro Manila’s adjacent provinces. I read novels in-between lunches and dinners by the roadside.

The disquiets of literature haunted me wherever I went.

My 20-hour job, which left for

me but four hours of sleep (five was a luxury I can’t afford) did little to stop me from reading and writing. It’s safe to say I was trying to build up the confidence to submit to literary publications. The confidence was slow in coming, though, but it came, nonetheless.

Much of my first attempts to get published as a writer of literature were rejected. Thinking that the “symphony” inside me cannot be denied, I grit my teeth. Soon I was accepted as “ed itor i a l a ssist a nt ” (fa nc y name for modern-day newsroom slave at the time) in one of the nationally-circulated broadsheets. That was one foot in the door of being published.

The little over 20 rejection slips did little to douse my resolve. My poor excuse for a salary I spent for books and food for my children. I read and wrote until I had bouts with fainting spells due to lack of sleep. Once I found myself slumped on the floor, my head right on top of the electrical extension cord where my laptop was plugged in. I was out for roughly two hours.

A nd since I was ter r ibly cash-strapped, I never got the chance to know what triggered my fainting spells.

Untiring resolve, coupled with learning from my mistakes, soon opened the doors f o r t h e p u b l i c at i o n o f m y works. And since I had no one to consider as mentor, I learned my mistakes by reading the best authors. These stories now comprise my first collection of short fiction, The Distance of Rhymes and Other Tragedies, published by the UST Publishing House in 2013.

It would be an utter lie to say that mere resolve can get you published. Literary editors are a crazy bunch. They don’t take haphazard writing for an answer. Stories that rattle on and on don’t make the cut. Verbosity offers nothing by way of chances. Characters demanding too much suspension of disbelief should be hung by their necks.

Don’t even get me started on the subject of bad grammar.

A few tips to consider: First, kill your darlings. The phrase came from novelist William Faulkner. “In writing, you must kill your darlings.” The

word “darlings” refers to the author’s favorite elements or even writing style which forces the reader to either stumble or roll the eyes. In short, avoid purple prose, highfaluting words, favorite turns of phrases used with repetition, and adjectives unless extremely and unavoidably necessary. Keep the prose or verse simple (something I have a hard time doing), crafted wisely, and more importantly, readable. Refuse the urge to sound intelligent by displaying your vocabulary. To write means to communicate an idea or a tale.

Next, refuse the overly dramatic. One doesn’t have to be overly dramatic to evoke emotion in the reader. Anaïs Nin said, “If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don’t write, because our culture has no use for it.” To cry out, to breathe, to sing through writing means to tell it like it is without the trappings of melodrama. To paint a scene in words as simply as one can without the overuse of metaphors and excessive descriptions, simply said.

A nother important thing to consider: craft the first line in a way that will make the reader read on. One doesn’t have to employ shock and awe to get the reader’s attention. A finely-crafted line can do the trick. Some of the best novels I’ve read begin with the most beautiful first lines.

Gabr iel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera: “It was inev itable: the scent of bitter a lmonds a lways rem i nded h i m of t he fate of unrequited love.”

In his monumental novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Marquez wrote his first line: “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”

Simple but powerful, J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan: “All children, except one, grow up.”

In the crafting of the first line, Sarah Jane Abbott, in an article in HuffPost, said, “If the eyes are the windows to the soul, then the first line is the window to the book. A first line can drag you in, shock you, confuse you, or touch you. A first line is what

makes you read on.”

Thus, keep your first line spectacular. It is the reader’s doorway to an equally spectacular adventure.

Lastly, write the story only you c a n tel l. Never reh a sh tired, old plots. Dig deep into yourselves, as the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke once said, “Know the reasons why you must write that poem or story.

Expand your horizons and be observant, and do this always in excess of the ordinary man.”

Go beyond what you can just see or feel but never too far as to lose yourself in the search.

Challenge your mind to refuse the temptation of copying what is already out there. Write about life and death, love and hate, with all the honesty and uniqueness one can muster. Tell it from your perspective, or from the eyes of an imagined soul. Keep in mind that your own life possesses a wealth of stories. Tell it like it should be told, which only you can tell.

Most of all, never let the everyday troubles hinder you from writing. These disturbances, these hindrances can be mined as materials for your stories and poems. Treasure them as you would treasure a memento.

No matter how fantastical your stories can become, they must mirror life as we know it.

Joel Pablo Salud is the editorin-chief of the Philippines Graphic magazine, the sister publication of the BusinessMirror. He is the author of fiction and nonfiction books and is a member of the Philippine Center of the International PEN, Akademyang Filipino and the Manila Critics Circle. He travels around the country annually to conduct lectures on Journalism Ethics to journalists on campus. “The Workshop” is a monthly column by the author which deals with writing.

BusinessMirror

Saturday, November 30, 2019 9

FICTION

The Last Dance M

By Ken Ly

ABEL purses her burgundy lips, sucking hard on the straw, though only ice cubes remain.

If only she had not finished her second Long Island iced tea so quickly. Thirtyfour years of marriage, and there Raymond is, gliding across the dancefloor of their favourite salsa club with another woman, their outstretched arms forming a perfect rectangle, while their feet jab and jive exuberantly to The Gipsy Kings’ “Djobi, Djoba.”

Other men in their early sixties try to slow their decline with languid evening strolls, and unhurried breast-strokes up and down the pool, their manatee potbellies hanging underwater. Raymond, however, is thriving as he enters his seventh decade, every day either lifting weights at the community centre gym or conquering forty freestyle laps, each stroke a forceful thrust into the water, body flat and rigid as his grandson’s kickboard. From where she sits with their friends, Mabel can see the curve of thick muscle in his slightly flexed biceps, the canary yellow polo t-shirt straining across his broad chest, and the smooth crescent of his bum in the brown cotton trousers she bought him last week from Giordano.

Her hand, as wrinkly as crepe paper, falls to the small mound of soft flesh around her waist. Her girlfriends strip the fatty skin off the poultry on their husbands’ chicken rice (when they are allowed to have it at all). Mabel, however, feasts on beef steaks and pork chops with Raymond every Saturday evening when their three boys bring wives, boyfriend and children back to their apartment at Marine Parade. She only bought this sequinned silk dress a week ago, but already the garment feels chidingly snug. Perhaps less protein, more salad this weekend.

Raymond hooks one firm hand around the back of Mei Yun’s bare shoulders, and effortlessly guides his partner into a dip, her enviably slim body draped across his sturdy forearm, her neck exposed as if to receive a kiss or a vampire’s bite. His legs wide open in a victor’s stance, he holds the pose for a beat, then

two, as if expecting wild applause.

Mabel manages a polite smile.

Lily, pressing close against her, leans over on a wave of Chanel No 5, and brushes aside the mahogany curls embalmed in hairspray around Mabel’s right ear.

“You don’t mind if I ask him for the next dance, do you?”

“No, of course not,” Mabel replies. “He’s all yours.”

She continues to suck aggressively at the mangled straw. Lily, looking suspiciously reupholstered, swivels over to Serene on her other side, the two women’s bobbing heads close in jocund conversation, the rusty red rinse in their hair sparking in the undulating shower of disco lights. The three men at the end of the table are already on their third round of Carlsberg. She cannot quite hear what The Husbands are saying, no doubt more grumbling about some government policy or another - not that they would ever do anything about it except pontificate loudly in the company of other equally belligerent old men. (Did one of them really just say, “If I were Prime Minister?”) Lily’s doctor husband, Patrick, is, as usual, holding court, gesticulating dramatically as if trying to win an argument by knocking his opponent over or poking him in the eye. They must be so relieved that they do not have to dance with their wives this evening. Just because they have been dragged to salsa classes by their better halves does not mean they have to like it. Or are any good at it. What men hate most, after all, is having to do anything in public that doesn’t allow them to show off.

She stabs at her phone with her index finger. She has only danced

twice with Raymond tonight, the other three women taking turns as if her husband were a slice of black forest being passed back and forth.

Is there time for another round?

Maybe, but it is already eleven. She needs to be up at six for school, and still has a small stack of marking to power through before she can go to bed. Raymond, of course, will not even need to set his alarm. His latest job trying to sell insurance means he can wake up whenever he wants. How lovely.

Lily turns back to regale her with a meticulous account of her vacation to the French Alps: so cold my face couldn’t move. Mabel has to swallow back the obvious joke. Her eyes remain locked on Lily’s in the halflight, hands folded neatly on her lap as if posing for a Renaissance painting. Underneath their table, however, Mabel’s manicured feet, nails hard candy shells, tap-tap-tap restlessly on the linoleum flooring as the band starts up her favourite song.

Just ask one of the other men to dance, Raymond argues each time they fight on the drive home.

They are our friends, they won’t be so rude as to say no. (Raymond certainly never does.) Mabel gives him the same reply every time: you’re a man, you won’t understand. She does not know what they taught at Raffles or Nanyang or any of those fancy schools that her friends went to, but she was raised a good convent girl.

Then again, Sister Dolores had never heard the call of Enrique Iglesias’ “Bailamos.”

An intake of breath, slow and deep, fills her lungs with courage.

She turned sixty last week. What could be scarier than that? She surveys The Husbands. They huddle even closer together, closing ranks so she cannot easily pick one off.

The last time she saw any of them on the dancefloor was an obligatory tango at a wedding anniversary, their faces in rigor mortis.

Of course, she should have foreseen her current predicament from the first group dance class. It’ll be such fun, Lily had promised. The Husbands, creased brows, crossed arms and sweaty armpits, knew better. Six months later, and the three men still occasionally crash into their partners, step on their toes, always managing at some point during the song to become entangled with their spouse in a cacophony of flailing limbs. Raymond, on the other hand, moves like a jungle cat. She feels safe with him leading, knowing he will support her whether she is turning in for a spin or leaning in for a dip.

Their instructor was particularly impressed by how a man of his age and build would merrily shimmy his shoulders and wiggle his hips with such teenage abandon. Patrick raised an eyebrow once, and called him “flamboyant.” Please!

Raymond was the captain of three sports teams in school, and always had the prettiest girls chasing after him. He has never had anything to prove. When their youngest son Philip, fresh out of Oxford on a government scholarship, sat his parents down at the family dining table, and told them he was gay, it was Mabel who sputtered and stuttered. Raymond, however, simply took Philip in his arms, saying, you are my son, and nothing will ever change that. “ Do you w a nt to d a nce, Patrick?”

Of the three men, he has shown the most interest, occasionally initiating a dance with his wife without prompting, especially after a few drinks. She glances at the table top. She should have asked for another round before making her move, but how could she when she knows Patrick will pick up the tab as usual?

She is just about to tell him that it’s okay, she was just asking, when a nervous grin forms across Patrick’s face as if being carefully drawn by a child.

“Why not?” He looks like he has agreed to bungee jump off a cliff, equal measures excitement and fear.

Her enthusiasm deflates quickly. He is better than when she last saw him dance with Lily, a little less stiff. Still, he moves like he is checking off a list in his head, so she is hesitant about executing any elaborate moves. She studies his face to occupy the time instead.

He is not unattractive. His face is weary and mottled with age, but decent and kind, with a hint of playfulness. An Indian Cliff Richard. It is sweet that he does not look directly at her: she is his best friend’s wife after all. As she feels the chunky strap of his Rolex watch against her waist, she thinks about how lucky Lily is, never having had to work. No late nights planning lessons and marking, no Saturdays taken up by Drama Club, remedial lessons, class camps. Thankfully, none of Mabel’s boys has taken after their father, whose past is one failed business venture after another, a ribbon of regrets. They all have good, steady jobs: two lawyers and a high-flying civil servant.

The songs ends, and she diplomatically mumbles something

about having to work the next morning. As they navigate past other couples to get back to their table, she notices Raymond and Mei Yun returning as well.

“Don’t worry,” says Patrick, clapping Raymond on the back as he plops into his seat with a heavy whoosh, relieved to have come home to the sanctuary of other men. “You’re still the king.”

Mabel is about to tell her husband that it is time to go, when he stretches his hand out to her.

“Can I have the last dance?” he asks, desire in his eyes. No, not desire. A sort of pride.

He takes her by the wrist, and with a gentle but insistent tug, pulls her onto the floor, his left palm softly cradling her back. Then, with his right hand, he shoots her left arm straight up towards the ceiling, as if calling the band and all the other couples to attention. For a moment, it seems to her that the music has stopped, and everyone is frozen in place, waiting for his cue.

As she tilts her head up towards him, a swirl of lights catches Raymond across the face like he is having his photograph taken. He looks so young. She remembers their last holiday together. It was only to Malacca, only for a weekend. They sang along to all her favourite Teresa Teng albums on the three-hour drive (even though he is more of a Bee Gees kind of guy), and walked along the river that Saturday evening, hand in hand, secondary school sweethearts again.

She remembers being sixteen - pigtails, pinafore, pimples - Mousey Mabel, quiet and grey, and how he had all these grand plans laid out.

He was going to be the towkay of a big company, buy her a bungalow, a Mercedes, maybe one for each of them. She laughed, and said she would go to the Teachers Training College anyway. Just in case.

The music starts up again, releasing the other dancers from its spell. He pulls her close to him, almost lifting her off the ground.

She closes her eyes, and breathes him in.

There is another world where he is everything he has ever hoped to be, and everything she has dreamed for him to be. This is not that world. But tonight, the most handsome man in the room has taken her in his arms. They will go home together after this last dance, and, without being asked to, Raymond will make her a bowl of instant noodles, and stay up reading the latest John Grisham novel beside her while she finishes grading test papers.

ANYARE is a two-in-one game based on Philippine history.

BusinessMirror

Saturday, November 30, 2019 13

CULTURE

Anyare makes history lessons boring no more

By Carla Mortel Baricaua Photos courtesy of Kawangis Publishing Co.

‘W

E want to make learning fun, as in a cool kind of fun,” and this is the promise of the new board game to hit the market based on Philippine history. Produced

by Kawangis Publishing Co., Anyare is the history card game developed for some serious learning while at play. In collaboration with 37 Filipino artists, each of the 101 cards comes with an original artwork, making the game more valuable since the deck is literally a mini gallery at the heart of each game.

The Anyare card game covers pre-histor ic Phi lippines all the way to the modern era (500,000 BC to 2018). Each box can accommodate two to seven players, aged 10 years old and above. With each game that can last around 20 mins to an hour, it also comes in two modes: 1) Habi, the beginner game where each player tries to guess when a particular historical event happened, 2) Pili, the advance game where each player ta kes tur ns to cha llenge another player to guess the name of a historical event.

In both game mechanics, each player is dealt w ith cards, and take turns to tr y and reduce the number of cards on hand.

The first one who runs out of cards w ins the game.

T he Anyare ca rd ga me was conceptualized and produced by Kawangis Kom i k s, in f u l f i l l ment of its m ission “to produce cre at ive mater ia ls t hat uphold and ref lect t he Fi l ipino cu lture and va lues and impar t these va lues to the next generat ion in suc h way t hat

is enter t a ining , engag ing , a n d l i f e - c h a n g i n g .”

Founded in 2015, the husband and w ife partnership of Aria and Faye Chelabian started K awangis Komiks, under the CSM Publishing Co., and launched the Ma-I comic book series. A year later, K awang is produced and published Incognito and Zona Cero independently. Today, the couple enjoys the company of Lawrence Martin, Fayola Villanueva, and Pam Liban as fellow partners under the K awangis Publishing Co. “Each one of us has our core strengths and we play our roles around those streng ths. A s someone who has a background in Industrial Engineering, aside from being a writer, I also handle the technical aspects of the publishing like copyright, contracts, customer acquisition, and partnerships. Faye handles all the production process, from content development to print production. Lawrence handles the game development area. Fayola is our certified accountant, and Pam is our creative direc-

tor for branding and marketing,” explained Aria Chelabian, Kawangis Publishing Co. general manager.

Kawangis primarily creates or ig ina l content /stor ies for comic books that are founded on Filipino culture and values and merchandise (games, posters, cards) and other print products that are derivatives of our original content. They can also provide services such as comic/story creation as well as character/world creation, developmental editing, storyboarding, penciling, all the way to production layout. “ Yea r a f ter yea r, we wou ld i n no v at e a n d c o m e u p w it h new titles and creative m e t ho d s i n s ho w c a s i n g v i sua l stor y telling through our comics and games. Anya re re f le c t s ou r a i m t o m a k e o u r r e a d e r s l e a r n w it ho ut re a l i z i ng it b e c au se t he y a re e nte r t a i ne d i n t he pro ce s s,” Chelabian added.

For t he record, t he f irst game ever produced by K awangis has been the Ma-I card g a me. It s g a me c h a r ac te r s were based on the comic series of the same title and produced primarily to help people learn Tagalog and Baybayin (ancient Filipino script) through play.

Anyare came about when the K awangis team checked the market and found that not a single game product was based on Philippine histor y.

“Personally, I got bored in most of my histor y c lasses since high school to college (my apolog ies to my teachers and professors). Textbook learning is really just too boring for someone like me who can’t stay focused for a long p e r io d of t i me. A nd m a ny people had the same dilemma.

Most of t he lessons, facts, a nd k nowledge t hat I have retained in my head are fundamentally tied to the emo-

tion I felt during the time I received the information. Psycholog y teaches us that if an experience is directly linked to a positive emotion/feeling, there is a higher chance of recall. Multiple sensor y inputs, induces higher memor y retention. Now imagine, if histor y is taught not only be listening to your teacher who talks about it, but actually holding it in your hands, and actively thinking about when it happened, that’s involv ing three out of our five senses already.

W hether you guessed it right or wrong, (the mechanics of the game) trig gers an emotion, and thus higher recall rate,” Chelabian said.

To engage t he col lec t ive ef for t of fe l low a r t i st s on t he creat ion of t he h istor ica l c a rd ga me, C he l abi a n m ade a n open c a l l on soc i a l med i a for subm issions. He a l so i nv ited some closed fr iends and h a nd pic ked Fi l ipi no a r t ists.

“A l l in a l l we had a good mi x of a r t ist s f rom Lu zon, V isaya s, Mind a nao a nd t he USA , coming f rom d if ferent industr ies a nd wa l k s of l i fe - - a r t st udent s, ga me app de ve lopers, c reat ive d i rec tors, book i llustrators, cor porate g raphic a r t ist s, pa i nters, mu ra l ist s, eng i neers, a n i m ators, paper qu i l l a r t ist s, a nd a r t teac he r s .” Fo r t h e i r c a r d g a m e a r t work , t he y were a sked to rec reate f rom t hei r person a l c hoice of h istor ic a l e vent s, ot her w i se t he a ssig n ment s w e re r a nd om l y c ho s e n for t hem. In recog n it ion of t heir cont r ibut ion, a n a r t ists’ ha l l c a n be fou nd at t he bac k of t he ga m i ng m at.

Anyare is a Filipino-coined word that translates to “what happened.” T he Anyare card game is available in Buku-Buku Cafe (Las Pinas and Cavite area), Puesto Manila Cafe (Intramuros, Manila), Arrows & Quivers

(Davao), and online through the Kawang is Facebook page and Shopee site.

Carla Mortel-Baricaua Contributing Editor

ANYARE ARTISTS

Jom Vega Faye Villanueva Jude Klarence C. Pangilinan Danielle Clemente Nina Hidalgo Ian Carlo Rillon Jappy Agoncillo Jannah Juarez Ivan Reverente John Paul Revilla Ian de Jesus Genesis Aala Malayo Pa Ang Umaga Aria Villafranca Jess Nalangan Wendy del Rosario-Picache Enrico Usigan Jme Foronda Cseline Dela Rosa Reginald “Kira” Joyce Pertez Bash Ralleta Alreena Levy Lumapas Dan Matutina Mary Ann Mendoza Jan Carlo B. Sarmiento Aron Lacro Loreen Mocorro John Berlin Almanon Lyle Jacosalem Patrick Acma Jem Luz Coleen “Himitsu” Sajou Renee Yzabelle Jose BK Pena Meynard Tabaranza Pam Liban

SINELIKSIK Bulacan Docufest 2019 winners

EL HEROE Verdadero Best Editing

CIRIACO Bayaning Limot Best Research

MAESTRO Best Poster Design

EL HEROE Verdadero Best Trailer

INA ng Biak na Bato Isang Inspirasyon Special Prize for Women Empowerment

EL HEROE Verdadero Best Cinematography

EL HEROE Verdadero Best Documentary Film

SINELIKSIK Bulacan Docufest workshop facilitator Seymour Sanchez

EL HEROE Verdadero writer Flor Katrina Capadusa

SINELIKSIK Bulacan Docufest 2019 judge and workshop facilitator Dr. Lars Ubaldo

SINELIKSIK Bulacan Docufest 2019 judge Ray Defante Gibraltar

PHACTO Head Dr. Eliseo Dela Cruz

BusinessMirror

Saturday, November 30, 2019 15

FILM

Preserving history through films T

By Seymour B. Sanchez

HIS year, PHACTO aims to instill the heroism and patriotism of Bulakenyos in the minds of their fellow Filipinos by setting the theme “Bayani ng Kanyang Panahon, Inspirasyon Natin Ngayon” (Hero of His/Her Time, Our Inspiration Today) for the competition. As such, participants were asked to conduct a comprehensive research about Bulakenyo heroes and their contributions to our country’s history.

When the dust has settled, the Karatig Film Circle bagged Best Documentary Film and three other awards for their entry “El Heroe Verdadero: Don Antonio Bautista” during the awards night held at the Nicanor Abelardo Auditorium, Hiyas ng Bulacan Sentrong Pangkultura in the City of Malolos, Bulacan.

The documentary about Don Antonio Bautista’s life and sacrifices brought home P100,000 in cash and a trophy for winning the

top prize, and additional P30,000 and a trophy for Best Cinematography, P20,000 and a trophy for Best Editing, and P5,000 for Best Trailer.

Wr iter Flor K atr ina Capadusa t hanked t he 140 actors who shared t heir ta lents for f ree and other people be hind t he scene who tirelessly helped t hem come up w it h their entr y. “Isandaan at apatnapung tauhan ng produksyon, tatlong lumang bahay, anim na

location shoot, walong araw na shooting at walang katapusang editing para sa isang 15 -minute na documentar y. Maraming salamat po sa inyong panahon at suporta. Salamat r in po sa Pamilya Bautista sa lahat po ng naitulong ninyo sa amin.”

Now that they have won cash prizes for their feat, she also revealed that they plan to turn the documentary into a fulllength film.

Ciriaco: Bayaning Limot won Best Research with a corresponding prize of P30,000 and a trophy.

Meanwhile, Maestro: Ang Pasyon ni Hen. Eusebio Roque took home the Special Jury Prize and Best Poster Design with P30,000 and P5,000, respectively, and trophies for each award.

In add it ion, Palatandaan (Tandaan Pala?) received the Special Award for Advocacy while Ina ng Biak na Bato: Isang Inspiras yon got t he Spec i a l Award for Women Empowerment. They were both awarded P10,000 and a trophy each.

The other SINEliksik Bulacan Docufest 2019 finalists are Viola: Ang Anino sa Likod ng Mga Pahina, Sa Mga Mata

ni Tikbalang and Dapit Hapon (Buhay at Kamatayan ng Isang Bayani). They received P10,000 for being selected to the finals while those who failed to make it to the shortlist got P5,000.

The documentaries will be included in the Bulacaniana Collection of the Bulacan Provincial Library and will be distributed to public schools, libraries, and offices in the province.

PH ACTO Head Dr. Eliseo Dela Cruz believes that Bulacan is fortunate to have many heroes who defended the country’s freedom in the past. He also stressed that there are Bulakenyos who are reliving their heroic deeds at present to pass it on to the next generation.

“Kayo po na gumawa nito ang siyang dahilan kung bakit nabubuhay ang alaala nila sa puso at isipan ng ating mga kabataan. Kayo po ang dahilan kung bakit ang mga ito ay maipamamana natin sa mga susunod na salinlahi,” he tearfully shared, as the organizers also recognized the featured heroes by awarding them with tokens of appreciation which, in turn, were received by their descendants.

Board Member Emily Viceo,

judges Dr. Lars Raymund Ubaldo from the De La Salle UniversityManila Department of History and award-winning director Ray Defante Gibraltar, film and communication educator Seymour Sanchez, Project Saysay Design Head Billy Joe Marciano, and Museo ng 1899 Curator Jose Ruel Paguiligan also graced the event.

PHACTO, which partnered w ith the Film Development Council of the Philippines, National Historical Commission of the Philippines, and National Commission for Culture and the Arts to stage the event, launched the theme for next year, which is “Alagad ng Sining na Bulakenyo, Dangal ng Lahing Pilipino!”

Seymour B. Sanchez Contributor

BusinessMirror

Saturday, November 30, 2019 17

FILM

Circumnavigating Furor: Elcano and Magellan, and the Voyage around the World

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By: Korinna Pia A. Saavedra

ARLIER this month, the trailer for the animated movie, Elcano and Magellan, was officially released to the public. In two minutes, the rather burly Portuguese, Ferdinand Magellan, sets out to bravely explore the Molucca islands and, in the process of putting together a crew of multinational origins, is met with both disdain and disapproval.

Portugal controlled the Eastern routes and there did not seem to be a way out of meeting them with violence if they pursued this folly.

Depicted as somewhat stubborn and single-minded, Magellan showed that he wasn’t easily dissuaded. He asserted that they could always look for a way through the west.

His charisma pays off as he attracts a ragtag crew later joined by the intrepid navigator Juan Sebastian Alcano, whose sense of adventure seemed to be larger than life. Bigger than even Magellan himself!

It’s a voyage towards the unknown—the first voyage around the world, and amidst trials, adventure, loss, and discovery, they eventually reach the Pacific.

True to the fictionalized historical genre, Elcano also finds a love interest.

The natives are depicted in loincloths, impressively garbed in a wild selection of colors, feathers, and spears and shields. They were at once exotic, dark, fierce, lean, defensively protective, easily angry or amused, united, and brave.

Amongst new peoples, Magellan impresses and develops friendships.

The depictions are summarized.

Two minutes.

Furor

T WO minutes was all it took

to inspire outrage and impassioned reactions online and off.

Ag usan Rep. Law rence Fortun called for the Movie and Telev ision Rev iew and C lassif ication Board (MTRCB) to revisit how the movie may be misrepresenting Philippine history, and suggested to either cut out parts of the movie that may defame Lapu-Lapu for his defense of Mactan, or to ban the movie altogether.

For their part, the Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP) released a statement clarifying their stand. T hat they respect artistic freedom and would neither endorse nor critique films and other art forms.

“One must understand the nature of history as biased, subjective, and selective,” Dr. Rene R. Escalante begins.

“This is true with the Spanish-produced animated film Elcano and Magellan, which is, obviously, biased in favor of Spain and conforms to the Spanish point of view of history. The same goes for us, Filipinos, in how to view the events that comprised the Magellan-Elcano expedition, especially with respect to our history as a people. We are also

biased toward out national sentiment and perspective: that Lapu-Lapu is our hero and Magellan was the defeated foreign intruder.

“The National Quincentennial Committee (NQC) welcomes this kind of development that allows the 500 years of the Victory at Mactan in 2021 to enter (the) consciousness of the Filipino people.

“What we request the public is to be critical and make use of the opportunity to discover by themselves who truly were our ancestors.”

Fictionalized History or Historical Fiction

THINK along the lines of Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo (Jose Rizal), The Woman Who Had Two Navels (Nick Joaquin), Dekada ’70 (Lualhati Bautista), and Gun Dealers’ Daughter (Gina Apostol).

As a genre, historical fiction or fictionalized history depicts a very specific timeline and historical event.

Plots and subplots are developed to fill in the blanks between historical accounts or to feature another point of view, another reality. In doing so, stories are re-told with artistic liberties, the embellishments of which speak more to the author’s skills and not necessarily to the historical timeline.

Others that come to mind are Pachinko (Min Jin Lee), Ruler of the Sky (Pamela Sargent), A Pillar of Iron (Taylor Caldwell), Rilla of Ingleside (L. M. Montgomery), and The House of the

Spirits (Isabel Allende).

In local cinema, more than a few depictions have been screened as full-length action films starring the big names as heroes defeating Spanish conquistadores. We have taken liberties and were biased.

Accuracy played second fiddle to bankability.

How does bias benefit the public?

BIAS, here, has become something of an oxymoron.

In representing a school of thought or construct, such as context, we must realize and accept that subjectivity—its relativity and relevance—depends on the people telling or interpreting a story.

For the most part, Elcano and Magellan is just a retelling of a story. It paints an adventure of epic proportions—one man rises to the occasion when a former and admired leader falls.

It is a romantic and enduring story about a triumphant human spirit.

If we took away the Spanish references and named the characters for local heroes in the most ideal of circumstances, the depth of feeling it would have inspired would have been just as momentous.

As it is, the animated movie simply revolves around the unsung hero in Elcano, and how his support and loyalty proved invaluable to the later fallen Magellan.

In a recent article in the New York Times, Carmen Iglesias, president of Spain’s Royal Academy of History states that

“(the) focus has always been on Magellan, but everybody should know that (the expedition) was the project of a Spanish king, financed with Spanish money and completed by a great Spanish navigator whose role has unfortunately been forgotten.”

For Spain, there was a need to balance historical accounts.

To watch or not to Watch

PER H A PS we should ask better questions.

Will arguing about historical representations change the past? Would it strengthen our country, empower our margina lized, or educate our youth?

Dialectically, it is safe to say that impassioned reaction is not enough. It is backseat driving, armchair activism, flat out reactionism. Furor is not enough.

There is a need to balance historical accounts and to take accountability.

We need to start viewing heroes near and far even as we need to respond to the times with more than just common sense and lip-service. We need to learn about the past and from it derive the seeds and characteristics that foster heroism: tenacity, being protective, loyalty, conviction, courage, selflessness, inspiration, determination, and integrity.

To watch or not to watch is not really the question we should be asking ourselves, now, is it?

BusinessMirror

Saturday, November 30, 2019 19

THEATER REVIEW

Theatre Titas’ PH ‘MacBeth’: Sound and fury signifying everything

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By Geraldine Orense Tan

ROM the moment I walked in the joint, I almost thought I was in the wrong place: Several black-clad actresses portraying witches were flitting, frolicking, and at times, frightening the audience. In fact, most of the cast were later revealed to be clad in black, in costumes by Jorge Lafradez, save for some effective accents/accessories on a few.

This is not your mother’s Shakespeare.

The show had begun even before the show had begun. The cast was drawing the audience in, at times shrieking, or making strange animalistic sounds, while each one recited lines from the play—“Sound!” “Come rain!”

“MacBeth!”—in turn, they also comically requested that the audience take the time to visit the rest room before the show proper starts. Though traditionally, there are only supposed to be three Wayward Women/Weird Sisters, MacBeth Tita’s production had many more, and they were truly among the most delightful elements of this iteration of William Shakespeare’s spookiest play.

Tarek El Tayech portrays MacBeth, a general of Scottish King Duncan, who seeks to fulfill the prophecy that he would be King of Scotland, as foretold by these witches.

As they did their thing (and wonderfully so) with choreography by Joanna Foz Castro, each time I heard the name “MacBeth,” I would cringe, for this is believed to be a cursed play. In my earlier incarnation as a theater actress, during my first play, we newbies were informed that MacBeth was our Voldemort, our “he who should not be named.” It was so ingrained in me that saying the “M” word allegedly cursed the performance of any (other) play during which it was uttered by any of those involved in

it. I can be slow at times, so it took a while to reassure my brain that I WAS attending a performance of MacBeth. Before then, every time a witch shouted “MacBeth” I would furtively look around, waiting for the gods of theater to strike someone with the closest to lightning that a malevolent spotlight could muster.

Stylized, interactive

THE Weird Sisters moved in a highly stylized manner similar to a Japanese theatrical style, such as employed by Inoue Rie in the movie The Ring, when she literally became the girl of my dreams for a whole months’ worth of nights, and I forever “thank” the friend who did me the kindness of dragging me to watch that movie.

A young, nubile witch played by Aylli Cortez, “befriended” me before the show, with purring noises, which I mimicked, and extended her hand. I cheekily placed a tissue in it. She seemed crushed: “I promise, it’s clean!” I said. Though she favored me with direct eye contact throughout the play (she probably noted how much I admired her commitment, stage presence, and her rich alto voice belaying her mere 17 years, our budding fictive friendship was ruined by Kleenex.

The portrayer of Hecate, the lead witch, was the statuesque Jeremy Mendoza. She was also most impressive, planting her crown upon

the floor, and using it as a fulcrum as she twisted and turned her body, intensely fixing the audience with her stare. At times I feared she’d snap her neck. The ladies in black were passionately peppering the scenes, spicing them so scrumptiously. They are reminiscent of the three Fates in classical Greek mythology, echoing and interacting with the main characters in a manner that truly was enchanting.

Presenting MacBeth in an interactive manner was truly a brilliant stroke on director Carlos S. Carino’s part, and that caught and nurtured the attention of an audience largely comprised of young people—two squealing youngsters in the front row, in particular.

At one point, apparently, I was expected to save one of the young actors, Tony Cortez, who despairingly reached out to me, as MacBeth (played by handsome, intense Tarek El-Tayech) dragged him off to kill him. The show is replete with exciting action sequences, with fight choreography

by Miguel Vasquez.

Actors’ actors

AFTER the show I went up to El Tayech to congratulate him. He has come a long way since, as I reminded him of when we had first met, “I was the original actress whose feet you were supposed to suck in an indie film.” (This was Director Jowee Morel’s “Mona: Singapore Escort.”)

T he lovely couple, to my right, at that point, had told me they had several children in the play, including my favorite little witch, the youngest in the cast, Rayne Cortez, and the young man whose life I fictively failed to save. I whispered to them: “I’m sorry I failed to save your son. I did my best.”

“That’s ok. Maybe next time,” the actor’s father whispered back.

The entire cast was amazing, with some memorable moments of exquisite anguished stillness, plus soul-wrenching sound and fury signifying everything, from Jonas Gruet, Miguel Vasquez, and Joel Parcon, the latter in a nightmarish fantasy sequence where the

dutiful witches whisked him off in an eerie “floating” exit.

Ne w York- t r a i ne d A n ne Gauthier Das Neves as Lady MacBeth was perhaps the most galvanizing presence of all. Petite and fragile like a porcelain doll, and as impossibly beautiful as a classic Disney Princess, she played the role with incredible attention to detail. Every nuance, every intention of her character was crystal clear, with, or without words. She made this sinister furtive smirk, before exiting, after inciting her beloved, MacBeth to kill her husband, King Duncan (Fermin Villegas).

The chemistry between the gorgeously criminal couple, ElTayech’s Thane and Gauthier’s Lady MacBeth was palpable.

The utter commitment to their characters clearly portrayed their passion that fueled their misguided mission.

Das Neves’ character’s strength and cunning was organic, and completely believable. Her diction and intonation, flawless. Then she breaks down after her conscience gets the better of her—and I’d never seen a more sincere, utterly broken Lady MacBeth. She is an accessory to murder, but your heart bleeds for her, even more than all the blood that she didn’t know was in the old man, her slaughtered husband, her king. In my estimation, she is truly a world-class performer and she deserves to take her place as one of our national, and internationally-renowned treasures.

The beautiful and multi-talented model, host, and actress, Issa Litton also performs as Lady MacBeth in some shows.

I strongly recommend this brilliantly unpredictable, high art retelling of MacBeth with its modern, avant garde sensibilities.

Kudos too, to the sound design

by Andy Gruet, and set design by Angelica Lorenzo, the tight technicals of Irene Romero, and the obvious team effort contributed by everyone on, and offstage, but still sticking to the true essence of the play in its classic form.