Wazzup Pilipinas News and Events

Friday, October 2, 2015

Sigabo 2015: Ang Ikapitong Taunang Patimpalak sa Sabayang Pagbigkas

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The Children’s Museum and Library, Incorporated is a youth leadership organization that promotes the welfare, development, and empowerment of the Filipino youth through its conventions, competitions, seminars, and tournaments. The CMLI Junior Council-Regional Executive Board National Capital Region (JC-REB NCR) 2015 presents SIGABO 2015: Ang Ikapitong Taunan at Rehiyunal na Patimpalak sa Sabayang Pagbigkas.

SIGABO aims to promote the talents of the youth through the Sabayang Pagbigkas while also highlighting the Filipino language, culture, and modern literature with their interpretations of the contest piece. Now on its seventh year and with a growing number of participating schools, SIGABO is envisioned to become one of the most prominent Sabayang Pagbigkas competitions in the country.

SIGABO will be held on October 24, 2015 at the Asamblea Magna (Main Theater), Tanghalang Pasigueño, Pasig City at 6:00 PM. Regular tickets are priced P250 and VIP Tickets are priced P350. For ticket inquiries and reservations, you may contact Sam Quinto (0906 106 6805) or send an email at cmli.jcrebncr@gmail.com.

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Noted Manila-based real estate developer Anchor Land Holdings, Inc. and the Philippines’ number one real estate website Lamudi (www.lamudi.com.ph) recently held a real estate professionals summit in Cebu City. Conducted last September 16 in the Sampaguita Room of the Mariott Hotel in Cebu, the summit allowed Cebu-based real estate brokers to learn more about the local real estate market.

One of the speakers, Anchor Land Holdings’ training manager Cheryl Linato, discussed the company’s Manila-based projects specifically Monarch Parksuites in the Bay City. Touted to become Metro Manila’s most important business districts, the Bay City is also one of the Philippines’ grandest tourism projects. It is already home to two integrated resort casinos, the country’s third largest shopping mall, BPO offices, residential condos, hotels, a convention center, and a concert hall, and Anchor Land will soon call the Bay City its home with its newest and most luxurious project, Monarch Parksuites—a four-tower residential condo complex.

Monarch Parksuites features Dutch baroque architecture and is one of the few luxury condos in Metro Manila that offer buyers unobstructed views of the famed Manila Bay sunset. In addition, as the Bay City is expected to soon employ more than 100,000 people—almost 4,000 of them expats—property investors are promised a potential rental yield of 8 percent.

Lamudi Philippines’ managing director Jacqueline van den Ende also spoke during the event and shared the secrets for successful online marketing for real estate brokers. Among the subjects van den Ende discussed was the current online landscape in the Philippines, and how real estate professionals must leverage this to their favor.

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Members of the KrisFlyer frequent flyer programme can now earn miles when flying on Scoot and Tigerair, in the latest enhancement to the programme.

With effect from today, KrisFlyer members can earn miles when they purchase a PlusPerks bundle or FlexiCombo fare for their flights on Scoot and Tigerair, respectively. The option for KrisFlyer members to redeem miles for vouchers for travel on Scoot and Tigerair, or to pay for selected products offered by the two low-cost carriers, was made available earlier this year.

“We are pleased to offer our KrisFlyer members more benefits through this partnership with Scoot and Tigerair. With this launch, our members can now earn and redeem KrisFlyer miles across the Singapore Airlines Group portfolio of airlines,” said Singapore Airlines’ Senior Vice President Marketing Planning, Ms Lee Wen Fen.

“KrisFlyer is committed to delivering on our promise to constantly make it more exciting and rewarding to be a member with the range of partners we have now.”

Scoot CEO Campbell Wilson added: “PlusPerks, a new bundle of benefits including KrisFlyer mileage accrual, priority check-in and boarding, preferred seat selection and ticket flexibility, delivers Scoot’s commitment to choice and unbeatable value. PlusPerks gives you all the more reason to ‘get outta here’ with Scoot.”

PH Startups, Developers Push For Global Digital Inclusion Through Facebook’s Free Basics Powered By Globe

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Philippine startups and developers were recently called to push for global digital inclusion by providing free access to basic internet services to millions of people worldwide through Facebook’s Free Basics powered by Globe.

Globe, through its venture capital subsidiary Kickstart Ventures, Inc., recently brought Facebook’s Free Basics closer to Philippine developer and startup communities to rally them to develop locally relevant and useful services for Filipinos through the Free Basics platform.

Jackie Chang, Product Partnerships Manager, Facebook, spoke to over 150 members of the Philippine startup community at the Raid The Fridge event hosted by Kickstart.

“We’re here to support local developers create locally relevant services and content that will make a real impact in people’s lives. This is an opportunity for the developer community in the Philippines to scale their products and bring the benefits of the internet to more Filipinos,” said Chang.

One of Kickstart’s portfolio companies, Kalibrr, which provides online job training and assessment tools to job applicants, is already one of the pioneer Philippine digital startups to be part of the Free Basics platform. To date, Kalibrr has 40,000 monthly active users on its blog advice content.

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Most of the Metro Rail Transit Line 3 (MRT-3) glitches experienced by riders the past months are set to be eliminated soon, as the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) has awarded the signaling system upgrade project to Bombardier Transportation Signal, Ltd. as part of the agency’s railway rehabilitation efforts.

“This upgrade of an obsolete signaling system, which should have been done by the private sector owner years ago, is crucial in minimizing operational disruptions. This will improve reliability and efficiency of the rail system for the benefit of our passengers,” said DOTC Secretary Jun Abaya.

Under the P53.37-million contract, Bombardier will replace the existing local control system called MAN 900 with the more contemporary EBI Screen 900 – a software with the same functionality as MAN 900, but which will allow the use of modern personal computers and fiber optic technology – over the next seven (7) months.

The signaling system maintains safe distances between trains and controls their speed: issues with its components may result in less operating trains and in slower travel.

Apart from modernizing the software components, this upgrade will also ensure the availability of spare parts needed for the uninterrupted and efficient operation of the metropolis’ busiest rail line.

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The Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) is pleased to announce that Hon. Ramon R. Jimenez, Jr., Secretary of the Philippine Department of Tourism (PDOT), will deliver the opening address during the PATA New Tourism Frontiers Forum 2015 at the Oriental Hotel in Legazpi, Albay, Philippines from November 25-27. The event is being generously hosted by the Provincial Government of Albay in partnership with The Department of Tourism, Philippines.

Secretary Jimenez, who is responsible for the country’s highly successful tourism campaign, It’s More Fun in the Philippines, will speak on the “Successful Destination Marketing Campaign – Trend in this digital economy”.

“This forum is timely and relevant as we step up our marketing efforts for our destination-based campaign and as we launch Visit the Philippines Again (VPA) 2016 –which is going to be the most massive retail-focused effort the Philippines has ever made. Destination marketing is a daunting task as it involves selling an experience, both tangible and intangible. The Philippines prides itself of having a unique biodiversity, rich natural resources, and wide variety of product offerings for tourists. But most of all, we have the Filipino people—the country’s most important asset—to thank for, who serve as the PDOT’s partners in building our brand and fulfilling the promise of a more fun Philippines,” Tourism Secretary Jimenez said.

Mr. Mario Hardy, CEO, PATA, said, “We are extremely delighted to have Secretary Jimenez open the event, as his experience and expertise on how to market a destination is something all industry stakeholders should learn from, especially when trying to market a new emerging destination. In addition to Secretary Jimenez, we have a very broad and dynamic range of speakers confirmed for the event, and delegates can be assured of coming away with practical skills and knowledge to take back and apply to their organisation, especially through the Technical Tour and Tourism Marketing Treasure Hunt.”

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Fortinet, the global leader in high-performance cybersecurity solutions, today announced the launch of its new FortiWeb 4000E and 3000E Web Application Firewalls (WAFs), designed to help customers prevent identity theft, financial fraud and denial of service through specialized, layered application threat protection. FortiWeb appliances now offer advanced security services backed by FortiGuard Labs’ advanced threat intelligence, providing real-time threat protection at the application level.These new FortiWeb solutions are also integrated with Fortinet’s FortiSandbox and offer support for new enhancements in partnership with Acunetix’s advanced vulnerability scanning solutions. These new additions bolster Fortinet’s broad end-to-end cybersecurity platform that protects customer data at every possible entry point to the network.

High-Performance Meets Advanced Layered Protection

The new FortiWeb 4000E delivers an unprecedented 20 Gbps WAF throughputand features built-in advanced anti-malwarecapabilities – a first for the WAF appliance market – while also integrating leading vulnerability scanning features from Acunetix.Fortinet’s FortiWeb appliancesprovide the performance, effectiveness and featuresthat only Fortinet can deliver, surpassing all competitive solutions and resettingexpectations for web application firewalls.

The FortiWeb series of WAFs are now fully integrated with Fortinet’s FortiSandbox and Advanced Threat Protection (ATP framework), ensuring that organizations can arm themselves with seamless, end-to-end protection from even the most sophisticated cyberthreats.These enhancements to FortiWeb deliver advanced, layered application threat protection for medium and large enterprises, application service providers and SaaS providers demanding the very best WAFs in the industry.

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AOC Philippines sponsored a special block screening of the movie "The Martian" starring Matt Damon. The event was held on September 30, 2015 at the Promenade Cinema located in Greenhills, San Juan and was attended by their dealers, event partners, and friends from the media.

It would not be my first time to see the movie as I already attended a similar block screening just a couple of days ago last September 28 sponsored by 20th Century Fox and Warner Bros, but I was actually late at that event so I missed a few minutes of the start of the movie. It was a great thing that AOC Philippines also scheduled the same movie screening.

The event started off with some activities with some booths like two photo opportunities from two different booths were at one you get a chance to win a visit the Kennedy Space Center if you get to be selected as the best photo, and at another one you get to have a photo taken with a Mars terra background. There was also a Beer Pong game where you get to win an AOC monitor if you can shoot all 10 balls in the cups.

There were also a few AOC monitors on display including their newest curved monitor which I get to review soon. The AOC people gave everyone a preview of their products and promos and hopefully we get to receive the complete information or press release soon.

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Here's all 12 finalists' plays from the Short+Sweet Theater Manila 2015 festival of 10-minute plays taken from the audience seats on two dates: Half from September 26, and another half from the September 27, playdates.

From half you will obviously see the audience heads which was our predicament since we were seated about 5 rows from the front, so I decided to transfer to the front row on the second day to be able to get a front view of the remaining half of the plays.

I also intended to divide my video coverage so that I can use the other half of my camera batteries for the backstage interviews and for photos during the plays. What I intentionally left out was to take photos during the backstage interviews because I was really sure I will ran out of juice if I also do that extra activity. Anyway, I can screen grab from the videos if I wanted to.

I have nothing but praises for the 12 plays that I've seen, and it was very unfortunate I was not able to watch the earlier weeks due to a week-long flu followed by a week-long assignment in Bohol. The same things always happen to us whenever we plan for an activity, other unavoidable circumstances and necessities will become obstacles to the earlier goals.

Anyway, we were still able to watch the "best of the best" and were glad our normally hectic schedule no longer got into the way. All the plays were awesome, and we have to admit that we can't really pick a single favorite.

Comedy Cartel presents The Marco Polo Hotel and VU's Sky lounge Comic Monday

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Start your week right with laughter as the BEST Stand-Up Comedy acts in the country is coming to Vu’s Sky Lounge!

This September, Vu’s Sky Lounge launches its new themed night - Comic Mondays with The Comedy Cartel - a veteran comedy group who has been performing all over the Philippines since 2007.

Next Monday (Oct. 5), Tim Tayag, one of the pioneers of point ot view stand-up comedy in the Philippines and one of Asia's Top Ten Stand-Up Comedians will take centerstage at Vu's Sky Lounge! Show starts at 9:30 PM! Entrance is FREE so See you there!

Vu’s Sky Lounge is the first sky bar in Ortigas, located at the 45th floor of Marco Polo Hotel, Ortigas, Manila.

For inquiries or reservations, text 0922-8596144.

#comedycartelPH #Vu’sSkyLounge