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Online beauty and vanity n
Digitization boosts PHL, Asean cosmetics sales
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By Roderick L. Abad | Contributor
ONE are the days when consumers would have no other option but to go to brick-and-mortar stores to purchase their favorite cosmetic brand.
Asean cosmetic market’s makeup
ASIA Pacific (AsPac) is a force to reckon with, as far as the beauty industry is concerned, being the largest and one of the fastest-growing markets globally for cosmetic and personal care. In fact, Euromonitor Research reported that the region now accounts for 32 percent of the global beauty and personal care market that is projected to continue growing 6.7 percent in the next five years. Within AsPac, Southeast Asia is at the forefront of the online wave as more and more consumers now make purchases online than ever before. Based on the media intelligence firm’s new study, Indonesia represents 38 percent of socialmedia chatter around beauty; followed by Malaysia, 29.3 percent; the Philippines, 27.5 percent; and Singapore, 5.2 percent. Filipino netizens are active Instagram and YouTube users, looking for quality content, from trends to tutorials, with regard to beauty.
Read their lips
PER category, lip products were the most raved about items of Southeast Asians on social media, taking up 49.2 percent. They dominated the face (26.3 percent), eyes (23.5 percent), and cheek (1 percent) segments. Such trend is apparent in the Philippines, wherein 70.5 percent of beauty netizens were most vocal about all things lips, followed by face (14.8 percent), eyes (13.7 percent), and cheek (1 percent). Brand-wise, Estée Lauder lorded over the online conversation, followed by L’Oréal. The report, therefore, concluded that consumers in the region think of lipstick as the most important beauty product to get their desired look. Within the category, moisturizing qualities, fair skin, and long-lasting effects were the most mentioned features, indicating that consumers look for these attributes when choosing products. Consumers online seek for products by colors, with “orangey red” (13 percent), “pinkish brown” (9 percent), and “real red” (8 percent) emerging as the Top 3 hues searched on the web. Product finish was, likewise, hotly discussed with matte finish (10 percent) seeing an upward spike in recent times, followed by glossy (9 percent), and satin (5 percent). Majority of the conversations on social media also focused on the various applications of lip products, including mixing up and layering products to create personalized looks.
The rise of influencers
CELEBRITY Intelligence, a separate report supporting Meltwater’s findings, shows that social-media influencers play a pivotal role in shaping opinions and buying decisions for 80 percent of beauty shoppers.
IPB | DREAMSTIME.COM
This is because the rise of digitization has overturned the $532-billion beauty industry—thanks to easy access to the Internet, mobile technology and social media. Such is highly evident in the Philippines, known worldwide for having the biggest presence online. Meltwater’s latest report, titled “Beyond Skin Deep: Understanding the Shopping Journey of the Southeast Asian Beauty Buyer,” shows the top trends in the region and provides key insights for brands looking to explore this new, transformative path-to-purchase process. In a nutshell, it is found out that social-media influencers are now preferred over celebrities for beauty collaborations; Instagram is the channel of choice for talentled partnerships; and lip products were the most talked about items on social-network sites.
Continued on A2
The US-China trade war is ruining Christmas for toymakers
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SKYPIXEL | DREAMSTIME.COM
PESO EXCHANGE RATES n US 52.3390
By Bloomberg News
HINESE factories are normally at their busiest during the third quarter, cranking out production of everything from Barbie dolls to miniature trucks in time to ship them over the ocean to the US ahead of the all-important holiday shopping season. This year’s different. Even with President Donald Trump delaying tariffs on $160 billion of toys to smartphones to spare the Christmas boom for US
retailers, the damage has already been done. That’s because big toy purveyors like Walmart Inc. have already piled up inventory given
the uncertainty over how the trade war will pan out, according to industry officials. “We will be among those bearing the brunt,” said Justin Yu, a foreign trade manager at Pinghu Mijia Child Product Co., a maker of toy cars and kids’ scooters in Zhejiang, China. “The influence is definitively huge.”
New markets
YU now plans to find new customers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa to make up for the US shortfall. The company is considering reducing North America’s significance to its revenue to avoid future tariff hits. Yu said he currently sends $25 million of goods a year Continued on A2
n JAPAN 0.4915 n UK 63.8117 n HK 6.6710 n CHINA 7.3273 n SINGAPORE 37.7245 n AUSTRALIA 35.1927 n EU 57.8817 n SAUDI ARABIA 13.9563
Source: BSP (August 30, 2019 )
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A2 Sunday, September 1, 2019
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Online beauty and vanity Continued from A1
They have overtaken celebrities as the top pick for beauty brand endorsements and commercial collaborations as 83 percent of survey respondents believe that they are key to making beauty trends, looks and products “cool” to consumers, specially the millennial segment market. Also, they deliver return on investment (ROI) well for beauty products. According to the report, brands get an average ROI of $11.80 for every $1.30 spent on beauty influencers. Factoring all of these, the study identified key strategies that cosmetic firms in the region can adopt to fully leverage how customers are consuming beautyrelated content. These include creating an immersive experience on digital platforms to help surpass existing barriers toward online sales, and focusing on personalized experiences to cater to customer demands of greater inclusivity. As consumers become more demanding and discerning, it’s important to take advantage of artificial intelligence and sociallistening tools to predict and forecast trends to better serve the customer.
Grab the ’Gram
MELTWATER’S research tracked
and studied mentions of the top beauty and cosmetics companies across millions of posts from various social media like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or ’Gram among millenials, and YouTube, as well as blogs, review portals and online forums. The most preferred medium of choice for talent-led tieups is Instagram, with eight times more beauty influencers on it than on Twitter and YouTube. Primarily, this is because the ’Gram appears to deliver the strongest metrics and highest level of ROI for influencers and brands. The Social Influencer Discovery tool of Meltwater was also used to identify the top influencers and content in each country surveyed in Southeast Asia, based on their popularity, content, social media presence, audience, and engagement rates. Receiving a score of 94 out of 100 possible points, Anna Cay (@annacay) is a top vlogger and makeup aficionado in the Philippines. Her ’Gram account shows that she has 583,000 total fans to date, 114,000 true reach, and 24,000 engagements for every post. Beauty tips, tutorials and reviews, as well as fashion and lifestyle content relating to her everyday routine, are mostly seen on her daily status.
THE most preferred medium of choice for talent-led tieups is Instagram, with eight times more beauty influencers on it than on Twitter and YouTube. SARAYUTH PUNNASURIYAPORN/DREAMSTIME.COM
Collaborate and multiply
GIVEN the immense power of social media in mind, Meltwater recommends collaborative efforts between social-media influencers and beauty brands. According to Meltwater Asia Pacific Regional Director for Media Solutions Mimrah Mahmood, today’s consumers know what’s being sold to them and would likewise choose to hear from real people. “As such, brands need to be more strategic in their talent collaborations, looking not only at vanity metrics like follower numbers, but also incorporating deeper insights such as average engagement per post, true reach, and demographic data to determine
whether an influencer appeals to the right audience,” he said. “As the market matures, influencer marketing budgets and future collaborations will only grow bigger, pushing the $500-billion beauty industry to become even more creative, transparent and accessible,” Mahmood added. To get consumers’ attention amid a cluttered and noisy digital space, an integrated influencer marketing strategy is non-negotiable, opined Bea Asavajaru, global senior manager (Social Media and Influencer Marketing), Clé de Peau Beauté, a Shiseido brand. “By carefully selecting and collaborating with influencers, in addition to continuing our traditional marketing efforts, our brand can
be culturally relevant to consumers,” she said. “Establishing authentic connections with our audience is of great importance. Since we have curated and worked with influencers who command considerable influence over a sizeable population, we have seen a direct increase in brand awareness and shareof-voice among our competitors,” Asavajaru added. Analyzing shifting attitudes, priorities and behaviors of the Southeast Asian beauty market, Meltwater gathered contents across millions of posts from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, blogs, review sites and online forums. The tracking period was the second half of 2018.
US-China trade war… Continued from A1
to US retailers, including Target Corp. and Walmart. Retailers started a buying frenzy a year ago as trade tensions began to heat up—shipping cargo volume to North America from Asia rose 7.9 percent in the second half of 2018, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That growth has slowed significantly this year—to just 0.2 percent in the first half—as US warehouses filled up.
Fewer items in stores
AND pointing to a continued slowdown in goods volume, China’s exports to the US dropped 6.5 percent in July from a year earlier in dollar terms. That means US shoppers are likely to see fewer new items in stores during the holiday season as retailers limit purchasing to reduce stock toward normal levels, said Rahul Kapoor, head of research and analytics at IHS Maritime & Trade in Singapore. “There won’t be any empty shelves,” Kapoor said. “Inventory level is very high.” In mid-August, Trump postponed planned tariff hikes on Chinese products such as smartphones, laptops, and children’s toys until December 15 from September 1, saying the delay had been made “so it won’t be relevant to the Christmas shopping season.” Yet just 10 days later, he hit the retail sector with a new blow: The new
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he IMF last month cited trade tensions as one of the biggest risks to the global economy as it downgraded its growth forecast for this year and next, while Goldman Sachs has said there’s growing concerns that the trade war will trigger a US recession. levies will be higher than initially planned as retaliation after China threatened to impose additional tariffs on American goods. Yu, the trade manager in Zhejiang, said the delay in tariff hikes was positive news, but since the increase is taking effect eventually, he expects to lose business. He also expects customers to request that the higher tariff costs be split between the buyer, the manufacturer and middlemen—which could hurt producers’ prices.
Shipping blow
ANOTHER industry getting hit, shipping, is cutting capacity as volumes shrink. CMA CGM SA, the world’s third-biggest container-shipping company, will pull out two vessels of its Asia-Europe services as early as this month. Orient Overseas Container Line Co., owned by China’s biggest shipping company, also halted some services to the US and Europe from July. Adding to their woes, the slowing volume has pushed shipping fees down at a hefty pace. Rates to move cargo on major trade lanes have fallen 7.4 percent this year, with those for the US slumping
26 percent, according to Drewry World Container Index. “This peak season is going to be challenging,” said Um Kyunga, a shipping-industry analyst at Shinyoung Securities Co. in Seoul. “Some shipping companies probably are not able to cover their costs.” Shares of Orient Overseas have lost 33 percent in the past six months, its peer Cosco Shipping Holdings Co. is down 19 percent and AP Moller-Maersk A/S, the world’s biggest shipping line, has lost 6.8 percent.
Spillover
A FURTHER concern is that the trade war will spill over to next year, hurting consumers’ eagerness to go shopping. The International Monetary Fund last month cited trade tensions as one of the biggest risks to the global economy as it downgraded its growth forecast for this year and next, while Goldman Sachs has said there’s growing concerns that the trade war will trigger a US recession. “Next year is much more concerning on the demand side,” Kapoor said. “This doesn’t go away easily.”
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LIST OF MOST LUXURIOUS AIRPORT LOUNGES IN ASIA
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IRPORT lounges are no longer just a place to while away your time in transit. The best airport lounges have become a fivestar escape from the masses: spacious, stylish sanctuaries with their own restaurants and à la carte dining, a well-stocked bar plus creature comforts ranging from a day spa to private rooms. Wind down and relax with a hand-picked list of seven havens for business travelers journeying to and through Asia.
The Pier First-class Lounge, Hong Kong (Cathay Pacific) C ATHAY Pacific’s flagship lounge is best described as being “like an apartment owned by a friend, if that friend was far richer than you and had much better taste than you.” However, it’s not your mythical friend’s exquisite taste which makes The Pier First-class Lounge such a stunner. Credit for that goes to London-based design doyen Ilse Crawford, who developed Cathay’s luxurious new look lounges along residential rather than commercial lines. The Pier oozes understated elegance, thanks in par t to Crawford’s choice of warm, tactile and timeless materials such as onyx, limestone and bronze. After gliding down the escalator from the cavernous airport terminal to this cozy haven of a lounge, most travelers peel left to visit the dining room or try their luck requesting a foot massage (bad news, there’s almost always an hours-long waiting list). On long layovers, the private day suites provide a relaxing contemplative space while the sizable shower suites with Aesop amenities leave you feeling not only refreshed but recharged. The large bar is another standout, as is the curated music playlist which seamlessly shifts its vibe to suit the time of day. (We should make mention of the nearby The Pier Business Class lounge, which has a similarly elegant design, great showers plus a Noodle Bar and tended bar of its own—we’d rate this as among the world’s best business class lounges.) Who gets in: First-class passengers on Cathay Pacific and other Oneworld member airlines flying out of Hong Kong (such as British Airways), along with top-tier frequent flyers across the Oneworld alliance (such as Oneworld Emerald, Marco Polo Diamond and Diamond Plus, British Airways Executive Club Gold, and Qantas Frequent Flyer Platinum and Platinum One).
Centurion Dining Room, Hong Kong (American Express) WHAT is arguably Hong Kong’s most exclusive restaurant isn’t found behind imposing doors at Admiralty or bathed in the bright lights of Kowloon. It’s tucked away on the upper level of Hong Kong airport, inside the American Express Centurion Lounge. The restaurant is the AMEX Centurion Dining Room, and the menu is crafted by Lau Yiu Fai, Executive Chef of the InterContinental Hong Kong’s two-Michelin-starred Yan Toh Heen restaurant. A highlight of the all-day menu include Oscietra caviar served atop a mix of Dungeness crab meat and crème fraîche, but served on locally inspired seaweed crackers rather than blinis. Well-heeled travelers can also sup on pan-fried sea bass and Hokkaido scallop, with a ratatouille emulsion and a basil lobster sauce; and beef short rib pot-au-feu, adorned by vegetables and shaved truffles atop a small bed of noodles. Add a glass of GH Mumm Grand Cordon Champagne and your flight is off to a wonderful start before you even leave the ground. Who gets in: Passengers whose names are laser-etched onto the invitation-only titanium American Express Centurion card.
Royal Orchid Spa, Bangkok (Thai Airways) THIS isn’t a lounge per se, but it’s an adjunct to the Royal First-class lounge at Thai’s home hub with offers indulgently hour-long free massages. This, is perhaps, the major drawcard for first-class flyers, as Thai’s first-class lounge itself can’t hold a scented candle to the best of its competitors. The serenely quiet treatment rooms are decked out like that of any upscale Thai spa with warm woods and a seperate shower area. Travelers can relax before or between flights with a full body massage incorporating acupressure techniques to relax the muscles, relieve stress and stimulate blood circulation. Additional herbal steam and sauna treatment “ease the aches out of your travel-weary body,” the airline promises. After your session, soothing tea is served in a sitting room while tranquil music plays in the background. Who gets in: First-class passengers on Thai Airways (however, business class and Royal Orchid Plus Platinum status frequent flyers qualify for a free neck and shoulder or foot massage).
The Private Room, Singapore (Singapore Airlines) “THE Private Room.” Even the name has a certain
patina of exclusivity. And Singapore Airlines chose that name well, as the only way you’ll get into The Private Room is to have a boarding pass for Singapore Airlines’ first-class suites. The emphasis is on not only privacy but calm serenity, a world away from the clatter of the nearby business lounge which is almost always bursting at the seams. That said, The Private Room isn’t a lush oasis of luxury: it’s a little old-world and perhaps even worn around the edges, which is why Singapore Airlines is embarking on a 50 million Singapore dollar ($36 million) upgrade of The Private Room and its other flagship Changi Terminal 3 lounges across the next two years. The dining room is certain to remain a centerpiece of The Private Room’s appeal. With its parquetry floor, wide plushly padded leather lounge chairs and wall paneling, discrete lighting and dusky tones the dining room channels the spirit of an English club. The Private Lounge’s dining room menus are changed seasonally, although several favorites of the frequent first-class flyers remain as a culinary north star, including wok-friend lobster, chirashizushi and, of course, satay. Piper Heidsieck Rare Millesime and Charles Heidsieck Champagne headline the drinks menu. Who gets in: The Private Room is exclusively for first-class passengers on Singapore Airlines.
Japan Airlines First-class Lounge, Tokyo Narita JAPAN is a food-lover’s paradise, and the nation’s dueling flag-carriers ANA and JAL (Japan Airlines) both take pride in the meals they serve in flight and on the ground. Japan Airlines has, for the time being, wrested that crown with the dining room of its newly renovated first-class lounge at Tokyo’s Narita Airport. Two sushi chefs serve freshly prepared sushi and sashimi, with the menu changing weekly so that regular travelers don’t tire of the same fare. There’s also a ramen counter, a champagne bar where the choice between Taittinger and LaurentPerrier could involve a glass of each, and, as you’d expect, a premium sake selection. Other creature comforts available at the JAL’s flagship first-class lounge include a shoe-shine service. Who gets in: First-class passengers on Japan Airlines and other Oneworld member airlines flying out of Tokyo/Narita, along with top-tier frequent flyers across the Oneworld alliance (such as Oneworld Emerald, JAL Diamond and Premier, and Cathay Pacific Marco Polo Diamond and Diamond Plus).
Qantas Lounge, Hong Kong THIS unassuming Asian outpost of iconic Aussie airline Qantas eclipses most business class lounges when it comes to pre-flight bites. Instead of bland “international” or predictable Western food, travelers have a last chance to enjoy authentic Hong Kong meals. No wonder there’s often a queue at the BBQ Pork Bar for some Cantonese-style char siu, or a frisson of foodie excitement when the yum cha trolley tray trundles around with dim sum and custard egg tarts. Complement this with a cocktail or two from the bar and you’ll soon appreciate why the Qantas lounge is a hit with business class passengers and frequent flyers alike. Who gets in: Business class passengers on Qantas and other Oneworld member airlines jetting out of Hong Kong, along with frequent flyers holding Oneworld Emerald and Oneworld Sapphire status (equivalent to Qantas Platinum and Gold, British Airways Gold and Silver, and Cathay Diamond and Gold).
Qatar Airways Premium Lounge, Bangkok P E R S I A N Gulf powerhouse Qatar Air ways has barely a half-dozen lounges in its network, but they’re all classy affairs. The Premium Lounge at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport opened earlier this year, with this business class lounge winning instant popularity for its à la carte dining room—a sight more common in firstclass lounges. The Bangkok lounge is a compact version of Qatar’s highly regarded Premium Lounge at London Heathrow Terminal 4, so travelers can expect the same quality of furnishings plus a dress code which keeps things respectable among the hoi polloi (even if you consider shorts suitable for Bangkok weather). Who gets in: business class and first-class passengers on Qatar Airways and other Oneworld member airlines flying out of Bangkok (a long roster which includes British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Finnair, Japan Airlines and Malaysia Airlines).
Bloomberg News, Originally published by Executive Traveller
Sunday, September 1, 2019
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DOTr allots at least ₧300M for first shipbuilding facility
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By Lorenz S. Marasigan
HE government may initially invest at least P300 million to build its first shipbuilding facility in the country in a bid to revitalize the industry and quickly provide the necessary supply of parts for vessels in the Philippines. Transportation Secretary Arthur P. Tugade said this is part of the medium- to long-term plan for the shipbuilding industry, which he sees as one of the answers to the ongoing debate about maritime safety in the country. “We have long talked about it in the maritime sector. In fact, we discussed it more than eight months ago. This facility will be for two classes, one for passenger ships and second is for leisure vessels,” he said on the sidelines of a maritime safety for u m i n Ma n i l a on Fr id ay.
P h i l i p p i n e Po r t s A u t h o r i t y ( PPA ) G e ne r a l M a n a ge r Jay Daniel R. Santiago explained that his group has completed t he feasibi l it y st udy for t he P300 -million shipbuilding facility, which will be built at an undisclosed area in the countr y. He declined to reveal the location to prevent an expected spike in land acquisition values. Initially, the 10-hectare faci l it y w i l l be manufact ur ing either fast crafts or roll-on/ roll-off (Roro) vessels, which he described as “people movers.”
“This is in line with our modernization thrust. We want to be able to deploy as many passenger vessels during the time that we are decommissioning older vessels,” Santiago said. He added that the maritime industry has given its support to this initiative, as a local shipbuilding facility will be more cost-efficient than importing parts abroad. “ T here is massive suppor t from shipping operators and ship owners because they will be the customers of this shipbuilding facility,” he said. Based on the feasibility study, Santiago said the cost of the shipbuilding facility should be at least P300 million, considering that the equipment to be used to actually manufacture the vessels is not included in the initial costing. The government, he added, is still finalizing the mode of implementation for the project. It could either be funded through general appropriations, publicprivate partnership (PPP) or as an unsolicited proposal. “We are now trying to find out what the best vehicle to implement
this initiative is,” he said. “We will first ask parties to partner with us, but if nobody wants it, then the PPA will take over the project.” Santiago added that his group is “looking at inviting” manufacturers involved in shipbuilding that are based on Navotas and Cebu. “We want to have specific manufacturers that have expertise in hull making, engine, coachworks, electrical. We want all of them to come together to come up with an assembly line,” he said. The operations and maintenance component of the initiative will also be auctioned off. “We expect those who will come in that they will be bringing in their equipment because they know how to jump-start the manufacturing of vessels,” Santiago said. He is also looking at onboarding the project under the Philippine Economic Zone Authority or the Board of Investments for fiscal incentives. Barring all delays, the government should be able to break ground for the facility by the end of the year or in the first quarter of 2020.
PPA eyes centralized mobile booking system for port users
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HE Philippine Ports Authority (PPA) has proposed the creation of a centralized booking system for maritime passenger services, akin to airline mobile booking systems here and abroad, to provide convenience to port users and get rid of fixers and scalpers at terminals. Lilian T. Javier, who sits as the department manager for port operations and services at the agency, said with a centralized ticketing system passengers will enjoy a seamless sea journey as this removes the need to queue, provides an assured seat on buses and ships,
as well as ensures safety at sea. With the system, a passenger may use his or her mobile application to book for a ticket from Manila to Matnog in advance without the need of buying separate tickets for the bus and the ferry. They may also pay online instead of lining up at passenger terminal building or port premises. “The online booking system is a real-time system with a singlewindow concept,” Javier said. “This addresses the disruption— meaning for canceled and suspended trips, and we hope to come up with a policy then proceed with
UK and EU to step up Brexit talks as parliament showdown looms
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NITED Kingdom Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Brexit team will meet with European Union officials at least twice a week in September as he seeks to break the current impasse and ward off a rebellion in his own party against a no-deal divorce. Johnson’s top Brexit negotiator, David Frost, asked the EU to intensify talks at a meeting with European Commission officials in Brussels on Wednesday, a spokesman for the Commission said. But both sides appeared to play down the chance of an imminent breakthrough. They “remain some distance apart on key issues,” Johnson’s office said in a statement. The EU said it is still awaiting “concrete proposals” from the UK. On Thursday, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said the EU should be “as flexible and positive as possible” in its negotiations over Brexit, should the UK come up with “specific suggestions” on how it intends to leave the bloc with a deal. Johnson needs to convince potential rebels in his own Conservative Party that he is close to agreeing a deal with the bloc ahead of a showdown in Parliament when it reconvenes next week.
‘Incredibly tight’
SOME Tories, including former Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond, have threatened to vote against the government in the House of Commons to block a nodeal Brexit, but might be persuaded to hold off if an agreement appears to be
on the horizon. “It is now time for both sides to step up the tempo,” Johnson said in the statement. “The increase in meetings and discussions is necessary if we are to have a chance of agreeing a deal for when we leave on October 31, no ifs no buts.” O n Th u r s d ay, L a b o u r ’s Tre a s u r y Spokesman John McDonnell said he’s “increasingly confident” there’s a crossparty majority in Parliament for legislation seeking to block a no - deal Brexit, b u t wa r n e d t h at p e o p l e s h o u l d n’t underestimate the difficulty of winning approval within the “incredibly tight timetable” Johnson has set. Johnson got approval from Queen Elizabeth II on Wednesday to suspend Parliament from mid-September to midOctober, restricting the time for MPs to debate the divorce from the bloc.
Rebels’ options
THAT’S spurred some MPs to say they will take action to block a no-deal exit as soon as next week. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said he’d joined with other opposition parties to issue a joint call for a vote on Johnson’s plan to prorogue parliament. Tory rebels are considering a range of options, including seeking to seize control of the order paper next week to block a no-deal Brexit, and as a back up option are trying to arrange for Parliament to sit during the weekend of September 7 and 8, The Times of London reported. Bloomberg News
the detailed design development.” She added that this move toward digital transformation is in compliance with the international directive for the electronic exchange of information on cargo, crew and passengers. Currently, the government is conducting public consultations with stakeholders. “For the next two months, we will continue with the consultation, especially for the details of the design for the one-ticketing system,” Javier said. Jay Daniel R. Santiago, the general manager of the PPA, noted
that this will likewise benefit the shipping lines, as they may incur savings in terms of administrative costs. This will also help the government in promoting trade and commerce while bringing necessary services closer to Filipinos. He added that his group has already developed a proof of concept for the mobile application and web site, and is hoping to finish all necessary legal requirements before the year ends. “We want to implement this toward the end of the year or by early next year,” Santiago said. Lorenz S. Marasigan
Japan defense costs swell on greater role, purchases of weapons from US
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OK YO—Japan’s defense spending is expected to set a new record next year as the country deepens its military alliance with the US and spends more on expensive American stealth fighters and other equipment amid threats from China and North Korea. The Defense Ministry on Friday released its ¥5.32-trillion ($50.3 billion) budget request for fiscal 2020, an increase of 1.2 percent from the current year. It could swell further if Japan agrees to pay more of the cost of stationing American troops in the country or for US-led monitoring of tensions in the Strait of Hormuz near Iran before the budget is finalized later this year and approved by parliament. Japan’s military spending has risen for seven consecutive years by a total of 13 percent, starting a year after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took office in December 2012. In 2018 it ranked 8th or 9th in the world in total defense spending, depending on calculation method. Abe has pushed for Japan’s Self Defense Forces to expand its international role and capability by stepping up cooperation and weapons compatibility with the US, as Japan increasingly works alongside American troops. Abe in 2015 reinterpreted Japan’s pacifist constitution to allow the use of force in defending itself and its allies. Among the biggest planned purchases are six F-35B stealth fighter
jets capable of short takeoff and vertical landing that cost ¥14 billion ($132 million) each, for deployment in 2024. They are the first of 42 F35Bs that Japan is to acquire in coming years along with 105 F-35As, for a total F-35 fleet of 147—the largest number of any country outside the US, and, critics say, more than is needed for a country committed to self-defense. To accommodate the F-35Bs, the Defense Ministry will reconfigure the Izumo, one of two destroyers currently serving as helicopter carriers, beginning later this year with a heat-resistant flight deck and guiding lights at a cost of ¥3.1 billion ($290 million). Defense Minister Takeshi Iwaya said earlier this month that F-35Bs belonging to the US Marines will also operate on the Izumo, primarily during joint exercises for the defense of Japan and not for independent US missions, addressing concerns that higher levels of integration between the two militaries could increase the risk of Japan becoming embroiled in a US-led conflict. The arrangement underscores Japan’s expanding role in its alliance with the US as Trump pressures the country to do more. It also is a major shift for Japan’s navy, which has lacked aircraft carriers because of a concern that they would remind Asian neighbors of Japanese World War II aggression. AP
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Sunday, September 1, 2019
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ROTC revival to benefit students, nation–defense, police officials
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By Rene Acosta
HE benefits that would be derived by students—not mentioning the whole country— from the implementation of the mandatory Reserved Officers Training Course (ROTC) for senior high-school students will far outweigh the issues and concerns that are being thrown against the program this early, the military has maintained. “The issues of monetary considerations, funding and manpower, though these are legitimate and valid concerns, may be small when compared to the training, patriotic and nationalistic fervors that we would be inculcating among our future generations,” said a senior military officer, who requested not to be named. At least 14 bills have been filed in Congress calling for the revival of the ROTC through its mandatory coverage of high-school students around the country. The program’s implementation was among the key legislative initiatives of the Department of National Defense (DND), which no less than President Duterte is supporting.
Call for more debates
HOWEVER, Puwersa ng Bayaning Atleta Party-List Rep. Jericho Nograles said making the ROTC mandatory for the 4 million junior and senior high-school students had raised the question over whether the military can accommodate such a big number as part of its ready force, aside from equipping them and giving them the desired training. He said that the proposal to revive and make the ROTC compulsory should be thoroughly debated, given that the financial burden for the training would also shift to the parents of the trainees, who would have to shell out a total of
P16 billion collectively for their children to go through the mandatory program. Nograles said the Department of Education reported that around 4 million students are enrolled as high-school students in at least 60,000 public and private schools around the country, and if military trainors are to deployed in these schools for the ROTC, then it would take away half of the 120,000 soldiers from military duty. M i l it a r y Spokesm a n Noe l Detoyato, for his part, assured the lawmaker of a “robust reserve” to lead the ROTC program. “We have Army, Air Force and Navy reserve units all over the country. We have a robust reserve command to resume their duties in school ROTC units. We also have officers and enlisted personnel who, in addition to their regular duties, act as training officers during weekends. The reserve commands of the Army, Air Force and the Navy are ready to implement the ROTC program if it will be implemented,” he assured. Nograles said that the reason why he was supporting the ROTC was because there was laxity in the military’s ready reserved force, but then again, can the DND and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) afford to hire 4 million for its reserved force? The militar y however maintained that not all of those who
would be taking the ROTC would end up in the military service, as the program is not an automatic ticket to becoming a soldier or e n l i s t i n g i n t he m i l it a r y, w h ic h i s a t ot a l l y d i f fe re nt pro c e s s a nd pro g r a m . “Taking the ROTC would not mean one could become an automatic member of the AFP. Even those who have taken the ROTC would still have to go through the recruitment and actual military training if they wanted to become soldiers,” a military official said. “All of the concerns on the ROTC, including the issues raised by Congressman Nograles are being looked into. I am sure they can all be addressed by the DND, with the support of the government,” he added.
‘Love of country’
SECURITY officials are not wavering in their push for the compulsory coverage of high-school students by the ROTC, believing it is the duty of the country to teach Filipinos to love their country and how they could become of service to others. “One good way to instill and nurture love of country is through the ROTC program in our school system. I believe that ROTC can teach our youth leadership, discipline, respect for authority and service to country,” Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said, adding “it will better prepare them to take on challenges that are bigger than themselves.” The National Union of Students of the Philippines (NUSP), however, said discipline and “love of country” could not be equated to taking the mandatory program, especially that the language that has been identified with the Filipinos, which is even a symbol of their identity, was being removed in schools. “To say that ROTC would instill discipline and patriotism is a tired and worn assumption, especially with the Duterte administration upholding the removal of Filipino and Panitikan as required subjects in college,” the NUSP said. “The government is, in no way, a trustworthy authority when it
comes to patriotism. The program it pushes for cannot hope to instill patriotism when the President himself remains spineless and unwilling to protect his fishermen stranded in sea,” it added, referring to the recent case of Filipino fishermen whose ship was struck by a Chinese boat in the Recto Bank. The NUSP said the ROTC would kill students even before it could instill the so called patriotism and love of country in them, noting the case of Roel Sedenio, a 21-year-old 3rd year Information Technology student of Josefina H. Cerilles State College in Zamboanga, who died from cardiac dysrhythmia or abnormal heartbeat after undergoing an exercise for the ROTC. “The unfortunate death of Roel is not an isolated case. This incident reminds us that ROTC instills docility to the students to the point of them obeying whatever orders that will cause harm or put them in a vulnerable position. Take for example the incident in Marinduque State College where a cadet was abused by an officer for resting because he felt dizzy,” the NUSP said.
Solid foundation
EVEN the Philippine National Police is endorsing the mandatory ROTC program with General Oscar Albayalde noting it would assure the country of a reserved force whose service can be tapped when it is necessarily needed. “We are convinced that the ROTC program is designed to build a solid foundation to instill patriotism and nationalism among the youth to become useful citizens who possess the skills, knowledge and the heart to uphold and defend the country’s national institutions and sovereignty,” he said. “A small country like ours deserves to have a strong reserve force that can be called upon to augment the existing complement of regular forces. God forbid that we will need to mobilize our reserve force like what we did in World War II, but when the situation presents itself, the reservists shall prove themselves ready and up to task,” Albayalde added.
IT’S GETTING HARDER TO TELL WHERE THE TRADE WAR IS REALLY HEADED
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AKE this week for example. Beijing awoke on Monday facing a situation that appeared to have taken a serious turn for the worse. President Donald Trump had not only increased US tariffs on Chinese goods, but had also described Xi Jinping as an enemy on Twitter and threatened to order American companies out of China. But by that afternoon, things had changed. Trump was again describing Xi as a great leader and had praised Vice Premier Liu He for emphasizing calm negotiations. The US president also said Beijing had initiated two “very productive” phone calls and expressed a wish to restart talks, a development read by many as a cooling of tensions. Soon though, there were doubts raised about those phone calls. China’s foreign ministry, when asked, declined to confirm that they’d occurred. Hu Xijin, editor of the Global Times newspaper who’s become increasingly prescient on Twitter, suggested that Trump was exaggerating the significance of conversations happening between lower-level officials and that nothing about the situation had changed. Beijing was instead hunkering down for a long fight, according to Chinese officials, and they were doing so at least partly because of growing unease about Trump’s flip-flops. Trying to gauge what might happen next in this trade war has always been a fraught exercise. Increasingly, however, it seems the only coherent thing that can be said about the situation is that it’s complicated.
Hong Kong SPEAKING of tough jobs, Hong Kong Chief
outlet wasn’t again overrun. That display of enthusiastic consumption helps explain why companies including Tiffany & Co., Ford and Tesla are investing more in the world’s secondbiggest economy.
Ma and Musk
A PARTIALLY loaded MSC Oliver sails out of the Port of Ningbo Zhoushan in Ningbo, China, on October 31, 2018. QILAI SHEN Executive Carrie Lam used a weekly appearance in front of the media to assuage concerns that China’s military could be called on to quell the protests that have gripped the city for three months. That came after a weekend of renewed violence and a commentary by the official Xinhua News Agency, which argued Beijing has the authority to deploy forces in Hong Kong. The economy, meanwhile, continued to flash warning signs with Hong Kong reporting this week that expor ts contracted for a ninth consecutive month in July.
Opioid crisis FENTANYL, the highly addictive synthetic opioid, is another aspect of US-China tensions that’s in the news recently. Washington has long accused Beijing of not doing enough to crackdown on Chinese producers who illicitly ship the drug to America. Trump, in his tweets announcing plans to increase tariffs on Chinese goods, cited fentanyl
as one reason he was taking that step. China has countered by accusing some in the US of using the issue for political gain and asserted Beijing’s crackdown is reducing the flow of fentanyl. There’s some evidence to suggest that‘s true, but unfortunately, the effect on America’s opioid crisis may be minimal. What once was made in China now appears to be increasingly produced in Mexico.
Crowded shopping AND while the trade war is forcing some companies to reduce their exposure to China, others are continuing to push ahead. Costco’s experience this week underlines why that’s so. When the American retailer opened its first China store in Shanghai, there were so many customers crowding into shop that the outlet had to close its doors earlier than scheduled. On day two, Costco instituted a tight 2,000 shoppers a day limit to ensure the
ELON MUSK visited Shanghai this week, during which he said the progress on Tesla’s multibilliondollar factory there had “astounded” him. Musk also took time during his trip to participate in a one-on-one dialogue with Jack Ma at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference. The two world-renowned entrepreneurs didn’t disappoint, discussing a wide array of topics from population collapse to space travel to a three-day work week in the future. On artificial intelligence, the two differed on one key issue. While Ma thinks AI will never be smarter than humans, Musk argued that we would definitely make things more intelligent than ourselves.
What we’re reading AND finally, a few other things that caught our eye: n China probes Tencent Music’s licensing deal with record labels. n How to tell if investors are pulling money out of Hong Kong. n Who is Hong Kong’s richest family and what do they have at stake? n Christmas won’t be merry for toymakers thanks to the trade war. n China has more foreign debt than the official numbers show.
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These might be the elections that may lead to Merkel’s fall
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IRST it got loud, then it got ugly at a recent campaign rally of the Alternative for Germany party in a commuter town near Berlin. Demonstrators against the far-right group blew whistles, beat drums and blared music to try to drown them out. Then there were the jeers and signs like “only the dumbest cows choose their own butcher.” The standoff reflects the “us-versus-them message” that has won the populists growing support in the former communist region and now threatens to contaminate the rest of German politics. “We are reclaiming our country,” Alice Weidel, the AfD’s coleader, roared at the enthusiastic crowd in Oranienburg, likening Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government to East Germany’s former authoritarian regime. “They do everything they can to denounce us, but every blow makes us stronger,” she said to resounding applause from hundreds of supporters in the Brandenburg town about 30 kilometers from the center of the nation’s capital. Nearly 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, two state elections in Germany’s east have become the latest flashpoint of the right-wing populism that has swept across Europe. With Merkel’s government already wobbling, a poor showing by the ruling parties in Sunday’s vote could eventually strain the coalition beyond repair. The risks to political stability come as Germany teeters on the brink of a recession, potentially complicating efforts to support Europe’s largest economy. Even if the AfD becomes the strongest force, it is unlikely to be able to govern, as no other party is willing to form a coalition with it. That, in turn, would play into its rhetoric that the system is stacked against it and its supporters. “Unfortunately a lot of people want to believe them,” Harald Grosse, 66, a retired salesman from Oranienburg, said in reference to what he considers simplistic and nationalist proposals for complex problems. AfD supporters “don’t want to see the wolves running around in sheep’s clothing.” In Brandenburg, the state that surrounds Berlin, the AfD is vying to become the largest party, running neckand-neck with the Social Democratic party—Merkel’s junior coalition partner, which has dominated politics there since reunification in 1990. Similar trends are at play in neighboring Saxony, where Merkel’s Christian Democrats are in the hot seat. The coalition between Merkel’s CDU-led bloc and the SPD—her reluctant partner—has spent much of its 17 months in power bogged down by infighting. Public disfavor has been expressed in one election defeat after another. The two ballots in the east could deliver a message that’s hard for the SPD to ignore. The party is already reeling from a dismal performance in this year’s European Parliament vote, which triggered the resignation of its chief. Most candidates seeking the job are already inclined to abandoned the Merkel administration, and a poor showing on September 1 could provide them with further arguments. “It’s totally clear that the difficult situation of the SPD on the national level impacts us here in Brandenburg,” Dietmar Woidke, Brandenburg’s premier and the SPD’s top candidate, said as he prepared to face voters at a beer garden in Spremberg, a town up the Spree river from Berlin in a coal-mining region unsettled by the government’s plans to phase out the fossil fuel. The SPD’s weakness has become the Achilles’s heel of Merkel’s coalition, with several members openly speculating that the party is only one more electoral failure away from crashing out of the government. But given the current leadership vacuum in the party and another eastern election in Thuringia in October, the fallout may take time to play out, according to Carsten Nickel, an analyst at Teneo Intelligence in London. “The bigger risk might be that this autumn’s eastern German results further add to that mix of anger and insecurity that has been building in the SPD for a long time now—even if we could start to see its effects only at a later point,” he said. While the mainstream parties highlight plans for better transport, education and other public services, the populist party has been tapping into the pain of reunification, which left thousands jobless. The campaign has even co-opted slogans—like “Wir sind das Volk” or “We are the people”— from East Germany’s uprising more than 30 years ago. On the campaign trail in Brandenburg, the AfD is hard for rivals to compete with, connecting with voters in a way that mainstream parties haven’t been able to. In Oranienburg, a festival-like atmosphere complete with German rock classics, a bouncy castle for kids, and plenty of beer and bratwurst lured supporters to fill a broad city square. A moderator told attendees not to get provoked by the raucous protesters across the street. By contrast, the CDU—which also hopes to unseat Woidke—launched its final push for support by gathering a few dozen people inside a stately 18th-century horsebreeding center in the rural countryside, far removed from potential hecklers, as well as undecided voters.
Bloomberg News
Faith www.businessmirror.com.ph • Editor: Lyn Resurreccion
22ND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME: ‘LUKE 14:1.7-14’
Prayer for humility
MSGR. JOSEFINO S. RAMIREZ SUNDAY GOSPEL IN OUR LIFE
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HE gospel reading today contains a very valuable piece of advice from Jesus Christ. “Everyone who exalts himself shall be humbled, and he who humbles himself shall be exalted” (Luke 14:11). History is replete with examples of the downfall of those who allowed themselves to be blinded by their pride. The virtue of humility is said to be the “foundation” of the spiritual life. It is what all the other virtues have to build on. For example, deeds of service and acts of charity, if based on pride and self-complacency, will be worthless before God’s eyes. They would not really be charity, because they would just be outlets for the assertion of one’s ego and sense of superiority. On the other hand, the humble person is ready to receive the transfor ming inf luence of the grace of God. Since he does not think too highly about himself, he is ready to receive the objective cr iticism of others. If he makes a mistake, he is not overeager to cover up his tracks in order to hide the mistake; but he is ready to rectify and is even filled with joy because the resulting correction will be objectively better. The humble person is truthful and objective. He seeks the good, and the least important consideration is he does it or gets the credit for it. Yet, pride is like the legendary seven-headed hydra monster that Hercules is said to have slain. Having seven heads, while one of the heads is cut off and the hero proceeds to cut off the other heads, the first wounded regenerates another head.
As one tries to kill off the manifestations of pride and thinks that he has done so, out it comes again in another form. When will it all end? The only effective remedy for pride is the grace of God, and that is why we should pray for the gift of humility. Some time ago, I came across a beautiful prayer written by Cardinal Merry del Val, who was the Secretary of State of Saint Pius X. It is found in Handbook of Prayers by Belmonte and Socias, which is on sale in many bookstores. It runs like this: “O Jesus! Meek and humble of heart, hear me. From the desire of being esteemed, [Deliver me Jesus] from the desire of being loved, from the desire being extolled, from the desire of being honored, from the desire of being praised, from the desire of being preferred to others, from the desire of being consulted, from the desire of being approved, from the fear of being humiliated, from the fear of being despised, from the fear of suffering rebukes, from the fear of being calumniated, from the fear of being forgotten, from the fear of being ridiculed, from the fear of being wronged, from the fear of being suspected. “That others may be loved more than I, that in the opinion of the world others may increase and I may decrease, that others may be chosen and I set aside, that others may be praised and I unnoticed, that others may be preferred to me in everything, that others become holier than I, provided that I may become as holy as I should.” Let us recite this beautiful prayer and then make a sincere petition for the gift of humility.
POPE, BISHOPS URGE ACTION TO SAVE THE BURNING AMAZON RAINFOREST
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ATICAN—Describing the Amazon rainforest as “vital for our planet,” Pope Francis joined the region’s bishops in praying for action to extinguish the massive fires burning there. “We are all worried about the vast fires that have developed in the Amazon,” the pope said after leading the recitation of the Angelus prayer last week. “Let us pray that with the commitment of all they will be brought under control quickly. That forest lung is vital for our planet.” Leaders of the Latin American bishops’ council also urged international action to save the Amazon rainforest from the fires. “We urge the governments of the Amazonian countries, especially Brazil and Bolivia, the United Nations and the international community, to take serious measures to save the lungs of the world,” said the statement by the top officers of the council, known by its Spanish acronym, Celam. “What happens to the Amazon is not just a local issue, but is of global reach,” the bishops said. “If the Amazon suffers, the world suffers.” The Amazon produces 20 percent of the world’s oxygen, according to scientific measurements. Brazil’s space research institute, which is responsible for satellite monitoring of the Amazon, had reported that the number of wildfires, common in July and August, had reached a record number already in 2019, with 72,843 fires spotted. The US space agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration released satellite imagery showing how smoke from the fires had created “a shroud that is clearly visible across much of the center of South America.” French President Emmanuel Macron called on world leaders to place the fires at the top of their agenda as they meet in France for the Group of Seven summit. Attendees include President Donald J. Trump, Macron and the leaders from Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has said publicly that he believes nongovernmental agencies—including Catholic-backed agencies such as the Land Pastoral and the Indigenous Missionary Council—are behind the illegal burnings because they have opposed his call for development of the rainforest. The organizations have strongly denied the allegations. In the front page last week of the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, led with two articles about the Amazon fires. The first, titled “The Amazon must be protected,” included general coverage of the fires’ scope and the
alarm launched by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. A second article reported on the Celam statement under the headline, “Save the forest to save the world.” In their statement, the bishops noted that the upcoming October Synod of Bishops for the Amazon will discuss the plight of the indigenous living in the area, as well as the deforestation of the region. Sixty percent of the Amazon rainforest is in Brazil. “Hope for the proximity of the Amazon synod, convened by Pope Francis, is stained by the pain of this natural tragedy,” the bishops said. “To the brethren indigenous peoples who inhabit this beloved territory, we express all our closeness and join your voices with yours to shout to the world for solidarity and pay attention to end this devastation.” And while the deforestation of the world’s largest tropical forest and the violence against the indigenous population there have been a great concern to the Catholic Church, the upcoming synod also has caused apprehension for the Bolsonaro government. In February, the Brazilian government was forced to deny that it was spying, through its intelligence agency, ABIN, on more “progressive” bishops and priests working on the synod. The government’s Institutional Security Cabinet (ISC), however, admitted it was worried that the meeting would be used to criticize the Bolsonaro administration’s stance on environment and indigenous rights. “There are no general criticism of the Catholic Church. There is the functional concern of the Minister of State Chief of the Institutional Security Office for some points of the synod’s Amazon agenda that will take place at the Vatican in October this year,” said an ISC statement at the time. The Celam bishops, quoting Pope Francis from his homily at his papal inauguration in March 2013, requested to “please ask all those who hold positions of responsibility in the economic, political and social fields, all men and women of goodwill: [to] be guardians of creation, of the design of God inscribed in nature, guardians of the other, of the environment; let’s not let the signs of destruction and death follow the path of our world.” The declaration was signed by Archbishop Miguel Cabrejos Vidarte, of Trujillo, Peru, Celam president, as well as the officers of the organization.
Catholic News Service/CBCPNews
Sunday
Sunday, September 1, 2019 A5
Beatification process for Darwin Ramos opens
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By Samuel P. Medenilla
AITH amid suffering. This would describe the life of Darwin Ramos, the latest “Servant of God” of the Catholic Church, according to Fr. Thomas de Gabory during a news conference on Wednesday that was held by the Diocese of Cubao that opened the process for the beatification and canonization of Ramos.
Gabory is the French Dominican priest, who was appointed as postulator by the Darwin Ramos Association to prove before the newly created diocesan tribunal that is now collecting pieces of evidence of the former street scavenger’s supposed holiness. “Darwin was a simple teenager. In appearance, he was like you and I, but in his heart he was deeply connected with Jesus Christ even while suffering from illness,” Gabory said. This was supported by Ramos’s mother, Erlinda, who described Darwin as a good son, who did not hurt anybody and harbored any ill will. Cubao Bishop Honesto F. Ongtioco said Darwin Ramos exemplified the fact that everyone has
the capacity to become a saint. “All of us have been chosen by God. It is our destiny…. Holiness is not something that would cause fear. What he [Ramos] did was simple. He became faithful [to the tenets of the Christian faith],” Ongtioco said. He said this was apparent with Ramos who would not fight back when hurt. “This is what we call heroic virtue,” Ongtioco said. Ramos spent his early years in the slums of Pasay City, where he became a scavenger to help his family earn a living. He was diagnosed with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, resulting in his being unable to stand as his muscles had weakened. In 2006, Ramos entered in one
Davidic Covenant By Corazon Damo-Santiago
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HREE kings ruled the Kingdom of Israel: Saul, David and Solomon. David was regarded as the greatest. Born in 1040 B.C. in Bethlehem, he was the youngest son of Jesse from the tribe of Judah. His grandfather Obed was the child of Ruth and Boaz. The second king of Ancient Israel, he reigned for 40 years in what was considered as the golden age of Israel. God’s covenant with David was unconditional. God did not demand any condition of obedience for its fulfillment.
David kills Goliath
DAVID cared for his father's sheep. He developed strength and courage as a shepherd boy. He played the harp well, too. Israel’s most feared neighbor was the Philistines, who can make iron weapons, while the Israelites had bronze, which was not that deadly. A formidable feature of the Philistine army was a giant, a nearly 10-foot-tall Goliath, who challenged anyone to a single combat. David saw Goliath when he brought food to his three elder brothers in the army. David volunteered to fight Goliath, and Saul agreed. Goliath felt insulted with an inexperienced David, but with just a single heavy 3-inch stone that struck his forehead, Goliath fell. Then David unsheathed Goliath’s sword and beheaded him, and gave his head to King Saul. David became a soldier in the army and later was appointed commander of troops. David won all his battles. Saul, envious of his success and popularity, attempted many times to have him killed. David became an outlaw leader but still a scourge of the Philistines, who continuously waged
war with the Israelites.
David King of Israel
AFTER a long war, Saul’s kingdom was defeated. As a result, all tribes of Israel acknowledged David as king. David then went to Jerusalem and captured Zion, a fortified hill in Jerusalem where a palace was built later for him by Hiram, king of Tyre (2 Sam 5:11). W hen the Philistines were informed that David had been anointed king of Israel and Judah, the Philistines planned to capture him. But the Lord told him what to do, that led to the defeat of the Philistines (2 Samuel 5:23-25). David chose Jerusalem as his new capital. A Canaan city in the time of Abraham, it was called Salem (peace).
of Tulay ng Kabataan (TnK) Foundation centers that help street children after getting acquainted with a group of street educators from the group. Discovering the Catholic faith, he received the sacrament of baptism in the same year and the first communion and the sacrament of confirmation in 2007. Ramos had developed a deep personal relationship with Christ, and not a day passed that the boy did not take time out to entrust himself to God. He was only 17 years old when he died on September 23, 2012, at the Philippine Children’s Medical Center in Quezon City.
Start of the process
AS postulator, Gabory will serve as legal representative before will make his royal throne firm forever” (2 Samuel 7:12-13). God’s covenant, according to theologians, was realized when Mary, a virgin, was betrothed to Joseph of the House of David (Luke 1:10) and “Mary will bear a Son of the Most High and the Lord God will give Him the throne of David his father, and He will rule over the house of Jacob forever and His kingdom there will be no end” (Luke 1:31-33).
David’s first song of praise
DAVID wrote 73 of the 150 psalms in the Book of Wisdom. Dav id a nd some L ev ites brought the Ark of the Covenant which David made. With some Levites, they celebrated, thanked and praised the Lord.
God’s promises to David
DAVID consulted Nathan on the construction of the temple for the Ark of the Covenant made by Moses at God ’s command (Exodus 25:10-22). The Lord spoke to Nathan: “I have not dwelt in a house from the day I led the Israelites out of Egypt to the present... In all my wanderings everywhere among the Israelites, did I ever utter a word to anyone of the judges whom I charged to tend my people Israel to ask: Why have you not built Me a house of Cedar?” (2 Samuel 7:5-7). After David has expressed his concern about the Ark of the Covenant, the Lord told him that He was with Him wherever he went and destroyed all his enemies. To David, God promised: “I will make you famous like the great ones of the Earth”(2 Samuel 7:9).... “I will fix a place for my people Israel that they may dwell in their place without further disturbance” (2 Samuel 7:10). God also promised special relations with his descendants, and
DAVID and Goliath, a color lithograph by Osmar Schindler (c. 1888) WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
the investigating body looking at Ramos’s sainthood. Fr. Danilo R. Flores, head of the investigating body, said the process is for Ramos to be declared “venerable” and eventually as “saint.” “The body will try to prove that Darwin, as servant of God, has the reputation for goodness and to be declared as such,” Flores said. Flores said they are now in the process of gathering documentary and testimonial evidence. They would then submit this to the Congregation for the Cause of Saints at the Vatican. “Darwin is famous because he has a certain holiness which is not common to the youth of the Philippines or in the world,” Flores said. “The task of the investigative body is to use the legal means in order to prove that our candidate [Darwin] for the beatification is already enjoying the beatific vision together with God and the saints,” he added. Pope Francis, through the Congregation of Saints, will be the one to decide if Ramos will become venerable and a saint. There are currently two Filipino saints, Lorenzo Ruiz and Pedro Calungsod. Both became martyrs when they died after being prosecuted for their Christian faith. If canonized, the 17-year-old Ramos will become third and the youngest Filipino saint. With PNA
David made his first song to praise the Lord. “Give thanks to the Lord, invoke His name; make known among the nations His deeds.... Sing to Him, sing His praise, and proclaim all His wondrous deeds.... Let the heavens be glad and the Earth rejoice.... Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel t h roug h a l l eter n it y.... Give thanks to the Lord for He is good for His kindness endures forever” (1 Kings 16:8-9,31,36). Damo-Santiago is a former regional director of the Department of Education National Capital Region. She is currently a faculty member of Mater Redemptoris Collegium in Calauan, Laguna, and of Mater Redemptoris College in San Jose City, Nueva Ecija.
Science
A6 Sunday, September 1, 2019
BusinessMirror
Sunday
AIRBORNE RESEARCH TARGETS WEATHER, CLIMATE SCIENCE
Nasa investigates impact of PHL smoke on clouds
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HE P-3B science aircraft of National Aeronautics Space Administration (Nasa) soared into the skies over the Philippines last weekend to begin a nearly two-monthlong investigation on the impact that smoke from fires and pollution have on clouds, a key factor in improving weather and climate forecasts. The Cloud, Aerosol and Monsoon Processes Philippines Experiment (CAMP2Ex) is the most comprehensive field campaign to date in Maritime Southeast Asia to study the relationship between aerosol particles as they interact with surrounding monsoon meteorology, cloud microphysics and the sun’s radiation, the US Embassy in the Philippines Information Office said in a press release. Led by Nasa, the US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and the Manila Observatory, in conjunction with the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration and the Philippine Department of Science and Technology, CAMP2Ex comprises an interdisciplinary, international team of field researchers, modelers and remote sensing developers. The study seeks to tackle some of the most difficult weather and climate phenomena to understand, monitor and forecast. T he Maritime Continent— comprising Sumatra, Malay Peninsula, Borneo, Sulawesi, the Philippines and numerous other islands and surrounding seas— has been long sought out as an area of scientific inquiry.
Aerosol particles influence major weather processes
AGRICULTUR AL and deforestation fires from the region, along with air pollution from cities, provide a ready supply of aerosol particles that inf luence major weather processes. Besides the torrential monsoons over the Asian archipelago, the region also produces moisture that provides rainfall over the Pacific Ocean and can even influence weather in the continental United States. “We know aerosol particles can affect clouds and precipitation, but we don’t yet have a quantitative understanding of those processes,” said Hal Maring, Radiation Sciences Program manager at Nasa Headquarters in Washington. “Our goal is to improve satellite products and numerical models to help scientists better predict weather and climate.” “Numerous studies have linked the presence of pollution and smoke from agricultural fires and fires from deforestation to changes in cloud and storm properties, but we lack the observations of the actual mechanisms taking place,” said NRL research meteorologist Jeffrey Reid. “CAMP2Ex provides a muchneeded crucible for satellite observing systems and model predictions to monitor and understand how atmospheric composition and weather interact,” Reid was quoted in the US Embassy press release. Aerosol-cloud dynamics have a profound impact on weather and climate, yet there are large uncertainties on how those dynamics affect climate.
Aerosol particles include sea salt, dust, air pollutants and biomass-burning smoke particles, and nearly all can act as cloud condensation nuclei (also known as cloud seeds). Depending on the size and composition of these aerosol particles, water vapor can coalesce around them to form water droplets that may later become rain. But if there is a high concentration of aerosol particles, the clouds may be populated with a larger number of smaller drops, which are less likely to coalesce into rain in smaller clouds. “Yet, recent research shows that these smaller drops may strengthen and increase the longevity of severe storms,” Reid said. “It’s an intricate science.” “Complex, nonlinear feedbacks between those processes that form cloud droplets and rainfall and those that drive the upward and downward motions within storms are challenging to accurately represent in numerical models,” said Colorado State University professor and P-3B flight scientist Susan van den Heever. “These feedbacks are important to determine storm severity and the formation of new storms. CAMP2Ex will provide us with unprecedented observations that will allow us to better represent these feedbacks in current research and weather forecasting models,” she said.
Smoke and pollution
SMOKE and pollution also affect how much incoming sunlight is reflected back into the atmosphere. Particles that are darker in color, such as black carbon from wildfires, absorb sunlight and contribute to global warming, the US Embassy press release said. Depending on the type and altitude of the cloud, black carbon may either support or suppress cloud formation; it also affects how much sunlight clouds reflect back into the atmosphere. Quantifying these mechanisms is crucial for improving global climate forecast models. Aerosol- c loud interact ions are notoriously difficult to observe in the field, Maring said. “Some clouds have very short lifetimes while others have very long ones, and they’re all located in radically different parts of the skies. Getting a quantitative look at these processes is always a tall order.” To be able to observe cloud and aerosol interactions, along with the associated weather systems, CAMP2Ex is leveraging instruments on multiple airborne and ground platforms to record widescale meteorology, composition, cloud microphysics, and solar and longwave radiation. Nasa’s P-3B science aircraft is fitted with remote-sensing instruments to measure a number of variables within and near clouds,
A DESTROYED house on the outskirts of Tacloban on Leyte island. The region was the worst affected by the Supertyphoon Yolanda (international code name Haiyan) in November 2013, causing widespread damage and loss of life. Caritas is responding by distributing food, shelter, hygiene kits and cooking utensils. EOGHAN RICE-TRÓCAIRE/CARITAS/CC BY 2.0
including those related to precipitation and cloud droplets, as well as aerosol size and composition.
Verifying the data
TO verify those data, a Stratton Park Engineering Co. (SPEC) Inc. Learjet, fitted with in-situ instrumentation, will fly in and around the same clouds at nearly the same time as the P-3B aircraft. The Learjet will also survey t he at mo s phe r ic cond it ion s above the clouds.
CAMP2Ex and Piston
OUT in the Pacific Ocean, the research vessel Sally Ride, funded by the Office of Naval Research Propagation of InterSeasonal Tropical Oscillations (Piston) project and operated by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, is providing nearly continuous radar and lidar observations as well as measurements of energy fluxes from the ocean surface and profiles of temperature, moisture and pressure from radiosondes. C A MP2E x a nd P i ston a re complementary in their goals. CAMP2Ex focuses on fundamental aerosol and cloud physics and remote sensing, while Piston focuses on air-sea interaction and the way in which weather develops on continental and intercontinental scales. “The synergy between air and shipborne observations is key,” said research scientist Derek Posselt from Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “The ship’s radars will tell us how clouds are evolving in time, while the aircraft will give us detailed measurements of the cloud interior and environment.”
SEA has most complex atmospheric phenomena; Yolanda
IN add it ion to t he i nt r ic ate aerosol a nd c loud processes, t he Sout heast A si a n monsoon e nv i ron me nt ho s t s s ome of the most complex atmospher ic phenomena on t he pl a net. The monsoon environment br ings severe thunderstor ms and organized convection storm systems, and it is also the birthplace of tropical cyclones in the western Pacific. The world ’s most intense super ty phoons form just east of the Philippines and are an integral part of the regional weather and climate. “C AMP2Ex is being conducted in the lion’s den of tropical meteorolog y,” Reid said, while noting that the Philippines is still recovering from Supertyphoon Yolanda (international code name Haiyan) in 2013, which reached a world record
one minute of sustained 195 miles per hour (315 kilometers per hour) maximum wind speed before making landfall.
SEA of particular interest to weather, climate researchers
THE region is of particular interest to weather and climate researchers because many studies have shown it to be highly vulnerable to climate change. For Philippine collaborators, the data from CAMP2Ex will help to inform some of the biggest weather and climate questions in the Southeast Asia region. “Rainfall is the most difficult variable to understand in our models, and it has an enormous impact on people here,” said Gemma Narisma, climate scientist and executive director of the Manila Observatory, a nonprofit Jesuit research institution focused on atmospheric and Earth science in Southeast Asia. “Results from our Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment over Southeast Asia, for example, show that regional climate models do not do a good job simulating observed rainfall climatology,” she said as quoted by the US Embassy press release. Narisma, who is also an associate professor at the Ateneo de Ma n i l a Un iversit y, noted that recent monsoonal activity in Metro Manila led to canceled classes; before that, the region had been suffering from water shortage due to drought.
Improving models for climate projections
“OUR research is showing that more of these weather extremes, alternating dryness and heavy rainfall are expected in the future,” she said. “Improving our models for climate projections would allow us to better prepare for these swings in water availability and flooding.” Increased understanding of the mechanisms inf luencing those climactic changes is another important and hoped for offshoot of the campaign, said James Simpas, an atmospheric scientist and professor of physics at the Ateneo de Manila University. “The Southeast Asia region is experiencing significant industrial growth,” he said. “We’re emitting more and more particulates into the atmosphere, which means that a lot of the aerosol interactions we’re studying now will be most likely further enhanced in the region in the future.” He said the wealth of data from CAMP2Ex “will be analyzed for years to come and will shine more light on how our ways of life affect not only us but also the rest of the planet.”
www.businessmirror.com.ph • Editor: Lyn Resurreccion
Study reveals health woes of OFWs
By Jonathan L. Mayuga
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S T U DY of 6 8 9 l a nd based overseas Filipino workers in Asia, Europe and the Middle East found out that the common illnesses of women OFWs concern the reproductive health, while male workers suffer from cardiovascular, urinary, neurological and immune system. The study, titled “Common Health Problems Among Overseas Filipino Workers [OFWs],” was conducted by the National Research Council of the Philippines (NRCP) of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST). The study confirmed that OFWs, known as the country’s bagong bayani, or new heroes, are overworked, stressed and sometimes suffer from mental-health problems, because of their poor work environment, including unfamiliar weather conditions and verbal abuse by their employers. Citing results of the 2017 study, Science Secretary Fortunato T. de la Peña said while there are healthrelated programs initiatives by both the government and private health organizations, OFWs need to be fully aware and understand these in order to maximize its utilization for their well-being. He underscored the importance of scientific research in identifying problems and solutions through social science, which does not escape the mandate of the NRCP, the country’s oldest research and development unit. De la Peña spoke during the DOST Technology Media Conference-Social Dimensions of Scientific Research. “Social sciences deserve space in scientific research,” de la Peña said as he presented the study of Veronica E. Ramirez, a member of the NRCP who gathered data and conducted interviews with OFWs and their families both in the country and abroad. “The social science aspects of the research are very relevant today,” he said, pointing out that there is now a proposal to create a separate agency focusing on OFWs.
‘Tip of the iceberg’
CONDUCTED between May 2017 and October 2017, the study covered a total of 689 land-based OFWs as respondents based on the medical claims from the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) and the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth). The OFWs were grouped according to occupation, sex, age, region or country of work. Common in all three regions— Middle East, Europe and Asia—are diseases of reproductive, cardiovascular and immune systems. The 689 claimants at OWWA during the period was just “the tip of the iceberg,” Ramirez said, as there are OFWs who opted not to avail themselves of health benefits either by OWWA or PhilHealth due to numerous factors. Interviewed by the BusinessMirror, Ramirez said the regions with the highest OWWA and PhilHealth medical claims are those without or with minimum social-security benefits in their country of work. Speaking in a mix of English and Filipino, Ramirez said the medical costs or expenses for maintaining good health and physical well-being seem to influence the health-seeking behavior of OFWs. “In the absence of affordable and accessible health care, OFWs resort to self-medication and or do not report their health condition due to fear of losing their jobs,” she said. In the case of those working in the Middle East, the desert is also a big hindrance. “OFWs are discouraged by the need to cross deserts just to seek
medical attention,” she said. Moreover, she added OFWs’ lack of awareness of their medical benefits, if there are any, is a major problem. “Most OFWs who refuse to seek proper health care are the undocumented ones who fear being sent back home. Of course, when they seek medical assistance, they will be required to submit proper documents, which they do not have,” she said. According to the study, the top occupational groups with OWWA medical claims are household workers (29 percent), service or sales workers (18 percent) and technicians (11 percent). There were more male (369) than female claimants (320), with 20 percent of the total coming from the 46-50 age group. Meanwhile, she said most common illness of women OFWs concerns the reproductive health. More male claimants suffer from cardiovascular, urinary or excretory, neurological and immune or lymphatic diseases, she said. Topping the most number of claimants are OFWs from the Middle East, which comprise around 68 percent of the total. Only 13 percent are from Asia. Unsurprisingly, household service workers in the Middle East also have the most number of medical problems.
Poor working conditions
ACCORDING to the study, before working as OFWs, the interviewees had no major health problems. However, R amirez said it doesn’t mean that the health problems were acquired in their place of work. “Most OFWs may have acquired the disease here before going abroad,” she said. Working conditions of OFWs have a lot to do with their health woes, the study said. Better working conditions, it says, must have free medical consultation, clinics for employees, provision of first-aid kit in the workplace; a designated safety officer; company health insurance, adequate waste disposal, private toilet and bath, social security; paid vacation leave, and one day off per week. Unfortunately, most OFWs land jobs with poor working conditions. Among the problems revealed by interviewees are their being made to work 10 hours or more; no day-off or sick leave; exposure to occupational hazards like smokes, fumes or noises; being forced to do multiple jobs and multiple shifts; and lack of decent accommodation.
Policy recommendations
A MONG t he p ol ic y re com mendations of the study are to incorporate in the Pre-departure Orientation Seminar the hea lth awareness programs, customize it to the specific country, and to highlight the common health problems with preventive measures based on their country of deployment. The study also recommended the enactment of a law ensuring health and life insurance for OFWs; and the inclusion of health education and promotion, health counseling, and coaching in health insurance coverage provided by health companies or health maintenance organizations. Also, it will help to expand the medical benefits of OFWs to cover actual hospitalization expenses from the current range of P3,000 to P25,000. T he st udy re com me nde d desig n i ng med ic a l benef it s according to common health problems by sex, by region or country of work, and by occupation in cognizance for the various risk factors associated with groupings like sex, region and occupation.
Tourism&Entertainment BusinessMirror
Editor: Carla Mortel-Baricaua
Sunday, September 1, 2019
A7
THE TRIP TO LAID-BACK TOWNS OF SIMCOE AND PORT DOVER
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Story & photos by Excel V. Dyquiangco
HILE many people travel to Ontario in Canada to visit the most popular spots, such as Niagara Falls and the CN Tower, they sometimes fail to engage in the small towns—which, in hindsight, also provide the same kind of attractions and thrill. A little more laid back, yes, but exciting nonetheless.
Two of these places which I had the privilege of visiting are the smaller and sleepy towns of Simcoe and Port Dover, a twohour drive from Toronto, the capital city of Ontario. Both Simcoe and Port Dover are part of the country and community seat of Norfolk County, a rural single-tier municipality on the north shore of Lake Erie in Southwestern part of Ontario, Canada. To get there, I traversed south along the expressway, of course, and as Toronto got farther and farther behind, I found myself admiring the huge acres of lands along the way, as well the cute and cozy houses. As compared to the ones in Toronto, these houses are a tad bit smaller that can occupy a small family of four, or maybe, five. Upon arrival at both Simcoe and Port Dover, which are just adjacent to one another, I felt like I was teleported to a Hollywood movie set, particularly that of a Western movie, sans the railroads, the cowboys and the outlaws. Much like the houses along the way, the restaurants and other establishments were also relatively cute and simple—with colorful markings and brown-bricked walls, highlighted by cars of different hues parked along the highway.
Swimming and cruising at Lake Erie
THE first order of the day was to swim at Lake Erie, one of the largest lakes of the five Great Lakes in North America. This lake is situated on the international boundary between Canada and the United States—with its northern shore on the Canadian province of Ontario, specifically the Ontario Peninsula, and its western, southern and eastern shores on the US states of Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York. During the summer months from June to September, Lake Erie at Port Dover is filled with people frolicking along the seashore or setting up picnics or ball games, such as volleyball on its sandy beaches. You can get some tan and free to take a dip. I caution you, though, that the waters can be freezing and icy cold, even during the intense summer months, as it is all-year round. It is quite difficult to submerge your
whole body in it, but as you move around, the waters may feel a bit warmer. If you want to admire the beauty of Port Dover, you can go on an hour long boat ride. There are many boats that cruise along the coast of Lake Erie that you might want to hop into, but there is one in particular that has the riders in stitches. The River Rider is a chartered pontoon boat that offers a comical flair, thanks to its captain who not only kids you that it is his “second day on the job” but entertains you with his colorful stories, such as the burning of Dover Mills, tales of the War of 1812, and the Rum Runners of Lake Erie, among others. While the boat takes its visitors up the Lynn Valley River, past the museum, under the bridge and into the Black Creek Nature Reserve, there are many sights to behold, such as prestigious homes, exquisite yachts, and the wildlife of Ontario in its natural habitat. One of the homes that caught my eye was a house with a slide on its backyard. Imagine that! Another attraction is the Port Dover West Pier Lighthouse. Significantly at the end of the west pier right at the entrance of Port Dover Harbor on Lake Erie, the lighthouse is made of an 8.6 square meter (28 feet) tapered wood-frame tower and square lantern. Originally used as a range light, the lighthouse offers both architectural and cultural values, and has two features: relatively easy to move and the towers being adaptable to new applications. The lighthouse also reinforces the maritime character of Port Dover as it is visible from the shore and its surrounding waters. Since the lighthouse lies at the end of a boardwalk, people who marvel at the structure can immerse themselves first with the breathtaking view of Lake Erie, including the several ducks making their way across the deep waters. If you get tired and would like to rest a bit, there are benches lying along the pavement where you can relax the time away.
Picking fruits and smelling the flowers at Simcoe
SIMCOE, meanwhile, has a lot of areas
PORT Dover Harbour Museum features the area’s commercial fishing heritage
AUTHOR at the Port Dover beachside community
LAKE Erie is known for its sandy shore and cold waters.
WHEN in Simcoe, smell the flowers, or pick some vegetables.
planted with different kinds of fruits and vegetables that visitors can pick, buy and take home. Some of these are Birkbank Farms and Jenala Farms (both located along Dufferin) that have strawberries, raspberries, and some vegetables in their care. Brooklands Farm offer asparagus, beans, beets, broad beans, carrots, corn (sweet), onions, peas, pumpkins, raspberries, rhubarb, summer squash, winter squash, strawberries, tomatoes and other vegetables. If you like blueberries, visit the Muskoka Blueberries. These lands are located along Muskoka. These produce are available, depending on the season. Take note, though, that some farms are closed on Sundays so if you are planning to visit, make sure you do on weekdays or on Saturdays. Given its parcel of land, Simcoe also hosts one of the biggest plant gardens known as the Sawaya Garden Trials owned by Mel Sawaya. Originally a garden to test annual plants in Southern Ontario climate, Sawaya has grown sporadically and this year, almost 4,000 varieties of plants and flowers are in store—with the breeders creating new varieties each year.
Be a mini pizza master at Cucina
PIZZA master Pasqualino Barbasso
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HE little tots are up for a challenge! Let them learn a new skill as pizzaiolo Chef Pasqualino Barbasso lets them do the tossing and making of their own pizza this September 1, 8 and 15. Two-time World Champion of Pizza Acrobatics Chef Pasqualino Barbasso will be guiding young guests as they try out their pizza-tossing skills at Cucina on Septem-
BE a mini pizza master at Cucina
ber 1 (Sunday). Chef Pasqualino will be showcasing his skillful moves at the restaurant from August 28 to September 5 for La Vita Italia. Cucina’s friendly chefs will also be on hand for pizza making lessons that children can enjoy on September 8 and 15. These classes are open to young guests aged six to 12 years for a fee of P1,000 per child. Chef Pasqualino is set to enthrall the young and the young-
at-heart with his wacky pizza stunts when he visits Cucina for La Vita Italia from August 28 to September 15, 2019. Please log-on to www.marcopolohotels. com for more details on the hotel’s ongoing promotions. Subscribe to updates via social media through the hotel’s official social-media accounts: facebook.com/MarcoPoloOrtigasManila and @MarcoPoloManila on Twitter and Instagram.
HOMES in Port Dover are simple but picturesque
ENJOY scenic Port Dover on board a yacth.
In the midst of all the green surroundings, these flowers stand out as I had to take a pause and breathe in the fresh scent. According to one of the handymen, these flowers are sold annually and the proceeds
go to three organizations, a Christian school being one of them. Indeed, this is a flower garden with a purpose! And that made this trip a whole worthwhile endeavor to treasure.
DUTY FREE PHILIPPINES RECOGNIZED AS ONE OF THE WORLD’S BEST DUTY FREE RETAILERS
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UTY Free Philippines (DFP) has been nominated for two coveted categories, including “Airport Retailer of the Year” and “CSR Initiative of the Year” at the 2019 Frontier Awards. Dubbed as the “Oscars of the travel retail industry,” Frontier Awards celebrates the best of innovation and creativity within the travel retail sector. Frontier’s distinguished panel of judges, composed of eight top executives from the industry who collectively boast a wealth of experience in the various product categories and geographical regions, selected from a large number of entries from all over the world. DFP is nominated alongside with Delhi Duty Free Services, Dubai Duty Free, Flemingo Travel Retail Ltd., Mumbai Duty Free, Qatar Duty Free Co., and The Shilla Duty Free for the “Airport Retailer of the Year” award. “It is an achievement for DFP to be named as one of the world’s best Duty Free retailers,” said DFP Chief Operating Officer Vicente Pelagio A. Angala. “Our entry, the newly opened Duty Free Arrival Mall at the Naia Terminal
3 was recognized for its product mix, excellent customer service and innovation,” he added. The said outlet was launched in 2018 to serve the increasing influx of tourist arriving in the said terminal. Meanwhile, DFP’s partnership with the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) in launching Go Lokal!, a retailconcept store showcasing quality products created by Filipino micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), inside DFP outlets was nominated for “CSR Initiative of the Year.” The initiative has been making Filipino products known in the international market, as well as in helping local start-ups and small businesses. “We are very proud of this project. Aside from generating revenue for the government, we found the opportunity to help small scale companies to create more jobs, alleviate poverty, and improve the quality of life of Filipinos,” said Angala. The winners will be announced at an illustrious ceremony on October 2 at Palm Beach, Cannes in France.
Sports BusinessMirror
A8 Sunday, September 1, 2019
Editor: Jun Lomibao | mirror_sports@yahoo.com.ph
INTERPRETERS’ DELIGHT By Stephen Wade
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The Associated Press
OKYO—Alexandre Ponomarev is the chief interpreter for next year’s Tokyo Olympics. He speaks more than a half dozen languages: Russian, English, Spanish, French, German, Danish and Ukrainian. And he can get by in a handful of others. But at times, even he needs an interpreter— for instance, when he’s working in Japan. “I can’t speak all languages, unfortunately,” he said, answering in English in an interview with The Associated Press. “I wish I could.” Next year’s Olympics will be an interpreter’s delight: more than 10,000 athletes representing about 200 nations or territories, many of which also have minority languages that are spoken alongside the national language. Stepping into the din are 100 interpreters—40 from Japan and 60 from outside—handling 11 official languages for Tokyo: Japanese, English, French, Spanish, German, Russian, Italian, Arabic, Chinese, Korean and Portuguese. It’s a team accustomed to interpreting for presidents, prime ministers and monarchs. But the Olympics are different and require fluency in the nuances of judo, the ins-and-outs of archery or the vagaries of modern pentathlon. Then mix in the lingo from new Olympic sports like surfing, skateboarding and sport climbing. “They train. They prepare,” Ponomarev said. “We have glossaries, we have Olympic terminology and we study different sports.” Even this is not always enough. Ponomarev said he was bamboozled when a snowboarder at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics responded in
English about a performance. “’Oh, totally rad man. Just so bad,’” Ponomarev repeated. Interpretation? It was a great run. “The surfers, they have their own speak,” Ponomarev said. “The same goes for snowboarders at the Winter Olympics. That can be challenging. But we certainly found an equivalent.” In Japanese, Arabic, German. Or whatever. Ponomarev’s team includes at least one former Olympian, and most have done several Olympics. He also corrects anyone who confuses interpretation with translation. He reminds that translation refers to the written word. Much of the interpretation service is for athletes after they’ve won medals. But interpreters also work briefings for the International Olympic Committee, the World Anti-Doping Agency or Wada, and the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Here, the focus can be disputes, doping, and other rule-breaking. One poor interpretation can cause confusion, even legal fallout. “They are used to working under pressure,” Ponomarev said. “They know that every word they do wrong is going to have repercussions. If you cannot understand what is being said, you do not invent. That is rule No. 1.” Ponomarev sees the power of artificial intelligence (AI) on the horizon, closing in on the professional interpreter’s space. “AI is not nearly as evolved as one might think to replace humans,” he said. “I’m not trying to say that I’m not worried about it at all, because I certainly am to be absolutely honest. Maybe 10 years down the road something will change. Maybe not.”
INTERPRETERS work in their booths during a Chef de Mission Seminar hosted by The Tokyo Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo. AP
He said machines still can’t always catch humor, a play on words or intonation. And they can’t see “a wink.” “It’s a similar question. Would you trust your legal affairs to a machine? Would you trust only a machine to fix your teeth or perform surgery on you? It’s a common misconception that we interpret
words. We don’t. We first understand the meaning behind them, and then we convey the message.” Ponomarev said cultural differences can affect language. And vice versa. He said he might assign a speaker of Brazilian Portuguese to a Brazilian, and a peninsular Portuguese speaker to someone from Portugal; likewise with Spanish, which is spoken differently across 20 countries. “Behind every language is a mentality,” he said. “I believe in acquiring a language you also acquire a certain mentality.” Tokyo’s Olympics will deploy an improved system of interpretation over Rio de Janeiro
and previous games. Interpreters will work out of the main press center, taking audio and video feeds from the scattered venues. This cuts out chauffeuring interpreters around the city. Ponomarev said a recent test of the system was nearly perfect, and could do five media events at once. “It worked brilliantly, like a charm,” he said. This means nearly every media conference will have simultaneous interpretation, in which the speaker’s words are relayed over an earpiece as they are spoken, rather than consecutive interpretation, which is slower and gives an interpretation only after the speaker finishes several sentences.
Ponomarev said he worked his first Olympics in 2008 in Beijing, and took over as the chief in Rio. He credits his mother with getting him started, smuggling DVDs of American films into the old Soviet Union. He singled out Star Wars and Indiana Jones. He eventually trained in Moscow and the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California. Under the Soviet system, he was assigned to study Danish, which is not widely spoken but helped with German and gave him a conversational understanding of Norwegian and Swedish. “Once you acquire one language, it just stacks up,” he said.
PLAYERS dribble during a three-day basketball training camp run by Giants of Africa in Juba, South Sudan. AP
Hoops camp urges South Sudan’s youth to focus strongly on sport
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UBA, South Sudan—On his first trip to wartorn South Sudan, Masai Ujiri, president of the Toronto Raptors basketball team, said he came to encourage the country’s youth. “You can come from anywhere in the world and you can become something,” he told The Associated Press in the message he’s giving South Sudan’s young athletes. Ujiri, a dual Nigerian-British citizen whose Canadian team won the National Basketball Association (NBA) championship for the first time this year, is also founder of Giants of Africa, a nonprofit organization to empower Africa’s youth through basketball. The program’s three-day training camp in South Sudan is led by professional coaches and scouts, many from Africa, and is aimed at teaching basketball skills and leadership. The training camp is eagerly attended by 50, mostly South Sudanese boys, aged from 14 to 18, who are equipped with uniforms, shoes and bags, and encouraged to focus on sport, even as the country struggles to sustain a shaky peace. Standing in the middle of the court in South Sudan’s capital, Juba, while young players tirelessly sprinted around him, Ujiri said it’s time to “erase the narrative” that sports cannot be promoted in South Sudan, as it slowly emerges from five years of civil war that killed almost 400,000 people and displaced millions.
Huddled in circles on the court during a break from lay-up and dribbling exercises, the young players get pep talks from the coaches. Pumping their fists in the air, one group shouts “We are giants!” as another band eagerly shares career goals with their trainers. “I’m here to go to the NBA because I want to have a better future,” said James Mabor, wiping sweat from his face. The 16-year-old’s been playing power forward for three years and wants to learn how to become a better shooter and defender. Since the program’s start in 2003, more than 80 South Sudanese campers have gone on to high school or university in the United States, more than 100 went to university in Nigeria and nearly 20 have played on junior teams in clubs throughout Europe, according to the organization. Three South Sudanese currently play in the NBA: Thon Maker with the Detroit Pistons, Wenyen Gabriel with the Sacramento Kings and Deng Adel with the Brooklyn Nets. Two-time NBA All-Star Luol Deng, who was born in South Sudan but grew up in London, has played for the Chicago Bulls, Cleveland Cavaliers, Miami Heat and Los Angeles Lakers. He was with the Timberwolves last season but is currently unsigned heading into next season. The late Manute Bol, who played in the NBA for a decade in the 1980s and 1990s, was one
of the tallest players in the league’s history at 7 feet 7 inches and known as one of the best blockers. Manute’s son, Bol Bol, was drafted to the NBA this year by the Denver Nuggets. The South Sudan Basketball Federation wants to brand the nation as a “basketball powerhouse,”Acuil Banggol, secretary-general for the organization, told the AP. Yet, the country’s still grappling with implementing a shaky peace deal signed in September. The power sharing agreement’s been fraught with delays and key elements have yet to be realized before opposition leader Riek Machar is expected to return in November and assume his position as President Salva Kiir’s deputy. Even though the budget for the ministry of sports, culture and youth increased slightly this year from less than $5 million to almost $7 million—more than 50 percent of which pays salaries—it’s still not enough, undersecretary for the ministry Kuac Wek told the AP. “Sports can help sensitize youth on peace and friendship, and help discover their potential.... But sports are expensive and to budget them needs more effort,” he said. South Sudan’s national basketball team was unable to compete in the qualifying competition for the World Cup in China, which starts this weekend, due to a lack of funds, according to the Basketball Federation. It’s hoping to have enough money to try in 2021. It’s hard for aspiring players in South Sudan who want to learn the game. There are less than 10 basketball courts in the country and the continuing conflict has hindered the development of basketball outside Juba. AP
Young engineer wastes no time in reusing refuse
Young engineer wastes no time in reusing refuse By Manuel T. Cayon Mindanao Bureau Chief
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AVAO CITY—A new partnership here between a shopping mall and a branded-consumer food and beverage product firm would rechannel the wastage of single-use plastics, like plastic bottles of drinking water, to an important item in classrooms: the school desk. Under the agreement between Universal Robina Corp. (URC) and the New City Commercial Center (NCCC), plastic bottles inside the latter’s chain of stores will be collected and sent to the Envirotech Waste Recycling Inc. (EWRI), outside downtown, the recycler’s president and chief executive officer, Winchester O. Lemen, told the BusinessMirror. Lemen, who some have called the “recycled-plastic” king, said executives of URC and NCCC have identified Matina, a village west of the international airport, as the first recipient of 50 desks to be manufactured from the collected plastic bottles. A collection bin will be placed inside the more than 30 stores of NCCC, according to the former Red Bulls cager. Lemen estimates EWRI would be able to collect between 5 to 10 kilograms of plastic. Based on the agreement, EWRI is tasked to manufacture the plastic desk, a product it has been making since 2010. “I think the plan of the partnership is eventually to distribute 50 desks for free to each school in Matina,” he said. The URC recycling project was launched here for the Mindanao area on August 17 and will be followed soon in the Visayas and Luzon. URC tapped EWRI for the publicly listed firm’s implementation of its national project, according to Lemen. “The focus right now is on the single-use plastics like drinking bottles,” he said.
A mission
LEMEN said recycling plastics for usable materials like a school desk was an idea that “no one believed when we started it” nine years ago. He said his team went as far to the north in Hinatuan, Surigao del Sur, and down south in Esperanza, South Cotabato. “That time, EWRI was able to collect only a few sacks of plastics from the land-
ENVIROTECH Waste Recycling Inc. (EWRI) President and CEO Winchester O. Lemen (in white polo shirt, right) poses with his firm’s partners—Universal Robina Corp. (URC) and the New City Commercial Center (NCCC)—in an initiative to collect plastic bottles from the mall and retailer chain and have these recycled by EWRI into school desks for Davao children.
fill in this city,” Lemen said, adding that his firm doesn’t make or import plastics to make school chairs. “Ours is to help the environment recycle these plastics and put less pressure on the environment,” he told the BusinessMirror. “Imagine that we are no longer cutting one tree to make a chair.” According to Lemen, a graduate of Mechanical Engineering from Mapua Institute of Technology, “many local governments were happy helping us collect their plastic waste when we made the presentation a year later [2011].” With local governments and communities now convinced, EWRI currently has 400 tons of plastic stored in its warehouse. That is enough for an operation of five months, according to Lemen.
kilometers north of downtown, uses an average of 60 tons to 90 tons a month of plastic to produce 2,000 pieces of school chairs. The plant produces 70 desks a day. The NCCC-URC partnership would boost the firm’s production volume. On a commercial basis, his company sells a desk for P1,700 for private and public schools, mostly in Metro Manila. But with the plastic to be donated from these bins, his company would be selling it 10 percent lower, or about P1,530 per piece. “The beauty of this chair is it can last for 20 years and, if there’s a part that would be broken, we can replace it for free,” he said. “They can be assured that we will still be here for the next 20 to 40 years.”
Will be here
Into housing
EWRI’S recycling plant in Sasa, some 11
BEFORE the end of the year, Lemen said
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SEPTEMBER 1, 2019
his company will roll out the first models of a 28-square-meter plastic house, measuring 7 meters long and 4 meters wide. He said it would be a habitable house that is more durable than the current design of housing units. “It’s 85-percent made of plastics and would cost only P300,000,” he said adding a member of the Home Development Mutual Fund, or Pag-IBIG Fund would pay only P2,000 for monthly amortization. “The [additional] advantage with this is it would take only one day to build,” he said. “That’s [also] 3 tons of plastics away from being [dumped] and 3 tons of precious wood or cement materials.” He said he came up with the idea to help fill the housing backlog running at 5.7 million units. Lemen said they plan to roll out the house project in November or December this year. Since 2010 EWRI has produced 300,000 pieces of school desks. And Lemen began much earlier than a television program that collects plastic bottles for its noontime community program. “Because we started earlier than [this noontime TV show], we have to do a lot of explaining, especially that we get the bulk of plastics from dump sites,” he said. He said he hoped his advocacy would go a long way for the environment “because we would save several trees; we would not cut a tree anymore.” Hopefully, Lemen would continue his “dump-diving,” of sorts.
BusinessMirror
MUSIC
CHICKOY PURA’S BRAVE NEW WORLD Text and Photos by Bernard Testa
H
eroes are not just soldiers and warriors, or men of destruction. A hero can be a he or she, thinker or doer, composer or listener, or a man of words, prose and notes. They say that Filipinos are born with a microphone in one hand. Many might agree, but then, not everyone can sing. We will always have singerheroes in our hearts. Depending on one’s age it could be a Nora Aunor, Victor Wood, Diomedes Maturan, Pilita Corrales, Joey “Pepe” Smith or Sampaguita. And it could also be Chickoy Pura, the frontman and vocalist of The Jerks, a seminal Filipino punk and new wave band that first burst into the local music scene in 1979. Pinoy Rock was never the same again.
FIGHTING BACK
Time has not stopped Chickoy from playing his kind of music. Today, 40 years after The Jerks, he
was in his element one night recently at The Hive along Scout Madrinian and Scout Tuason Streets in Quezon City. Wearing a ‘palos’ cap, a military green canvas vest jacket over a red t-shirt, faded blue denim pants, and grey All Star sneakers, he was passing the time, waiting for his fund-raising event at nearby My Brother’s Moustache. All the people he valued would be there— friends from the music industry, from government, and from the parliament of the streets. “Sandali ha iinom muna ako ng mga maintenance ko [Hold on a second, I need to take my
maintenance medicine],” he said as we arrived at half past six in the evening. He was on the steps under the canopy of a big tarpaulin showing an artist's rendition of him singing with singular energy and rage. The night was full of the past gnawing toward the present; a present loaded with a heavy concern. He was recently diagnosed with T-cell lymphoma, a rare type of cancer of the lymph nodes.
But just like any protagonist in a movie, the signer refuses to just sit idly by. And he is fighting back.
INTENSE
“Sir, kumusta ka?” we asked as Chickoy casually sat on a yellow chair at the al fresco area of the restaurant next to the venue. “Heto ok lang, actually hindi naman nagbago ‘yun level ng Continued on page 4
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SEPTEMBER 01 , 2019 | soundstrip.businessmirror@gmail.com
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Chickoy...
from page 3
energy ko, ang kaibahan lang e me kapirasong papel na nagsasabing me kanser ako [I›m okay. My energy level did not change. The only thing different is that now, there is a piece of paper saying that I have cancer],» he said. He added that he went through a battery of tests. Doctors said his T-cell lymphoma resulted from a secondary complication from his skin asthma and erythro dermatitis. He uses steroids which makes him a bit bloated. “Anyway, I’m fit, except for recommendations doctors make from time to time. I carry on. No changes in my family life and in my household chores, especially,” he said laughing. The big C may be on him but it is absent from the face and demeanor of this music icon, singer, songwriter, actor, and activist. “My desire to remain a musician is as intense as before. Kahit
na dumadaan ako sa ganitong pagsubok [Even as I go through this trying phase], my intention is still to continue, while I can still do it, even if my hands suffer wounds—a side effect of my condition,» he said. A friend has given him a pair of gloves, so he can still continue to play guitar. He is always seen carrying his guitar wherever he goes. “Kapag nasa stage ako, ‘yun ang pinakamasayang oras ng buhay ko, kaya wala akong intensyong talagang tumigil [I am happiest when I am on stage so I have no intention of calling it quits],» he said.
FULL CIRCLE
Looking at all the people gathered that night, Chickoy said he has gone full circle. “There, that’s my immediate family and over there are my contemporaries; people who knew me before I became part of a band. They saw my transformation from my student days, all the way to my journey as a folksinger. With a little help from his friends,
the second fundraising proved to be a full packed event. It was a mustsee jam, a gathering of the greats led by Lolita Carbon, Bayang Barrios and Cookie Chua—collectively known as the Tres Marias, Lester and Cynthia Alexander, Noli Aurillo, Noel Cabangon, Mon Espia, Hans Manapat,and Corky Kiko and Rene to name a few. Across music genres, Chickoy has many friends. “Marami akong ginalawang na circle [I moved in many circles]. My band friends are planning to hold another fund raiser.” He is grateful for the overwhelming goodwill that is coming his way. At times, Chickoy said, he gets offers of support from people he has not been close to. “Nag-aalok ng tulong at [They offer help and] prayers, the most important of all.” Chickoy added, “Wala akong mapagsidlan ng saya [I cannot contain my happiness] with the way people are responding. The support is overwhelming. This is the second fund raising. The first was at Conspiracy Bar.» All the fund-raising events were planned by his friends and peers. Chickoy said that all he does is coordinate and play his music at the events.
NEW SONGS
“I am inspired to come up with new songs. But the task at hand is writing something about medical abstracts because of all the checkups I have been undergoing and our need to find a hemo-oncologist.” he said with amused laughter. Chickoy has established his own tempo to deal with the continuing battery of laboratory tests and the fund raising he needs to sustain his medical treatments. “Personally,
I don’t want to take my condition too seriously. I am resolved to treat this as a life concern. Yes I am sick but it shouldn’t stop me from doing things for other people. For example, I still go out of my way to serve the people.” Music allows him to surpass his current state of health. Music that he has deftly used to push for social change. “As I consider it, cancer is the least of my problems,” Chickoy said, “It does not compare to the everyday killings in Negros. Those farmers died for asserting their rights. That’s all they did and they were killed for it. Every day, for the past month or so, people are getting killed in Negros for fighting for their rights. No cancer has ever done that many killings in so short a time.” To him, it is the social cancer afflicting Philippine society at present that people should be most worried about. And to all his fans, friends, and family who came to the fund-raising event, he offers his humble and sincerest thanks. “Thank you for all the prayers. I value these thoughts more than this specter of my illness. I gain strength from all their good will,” he said, adding that “for as long as I have strength, I will continue to write and sing my music. It is what defines me.” Chickoy added that at 62, age is fast catching up on him but that rage will keep him going. He recounted the famous Dylan Thomas poem, “Do not go gentle into that good night,” saying that it addressed a father who was sick. “The poem said the father must not surrender, that he should fight and rage, rage, against the dying of the light,” he said, mentioning that this is probably what he would also sing to himself.
d trip
soundstrip.businessmirror@gmail.com | SEPTEMBER 01 , 2019
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SIC ON PRINT
Speaking With Polyvinyl’s Chris Hanssen About Fil-Am Artist Jay Som, American Football & The Rise Of Vinyl By Rick Olivares
F
ilipino-American indie artist Melina Duterte’s second opus, “Anak Ko,” (under the moniker of Jay Som) was released last August 23 to widespread acclaim and interest. The lo-fi bedroom pop Jay Som recently relocated to Los Angeles from San Francisco, and Anak Ko reflected the changes in scenery more so living in the Joshua Tree area. Her first album, Everybody Works came out of nowhere in March of 2017 to top many an indie list in the United States and in the Philippines. That left indie music fans eagerly waiting for her second album and no one it seems is disappointed. We spoke with Polyvinyl’s Chris Hassen, the label’s production manager on about Jay Som, recent Manila visitor American Football, and the direction of vinyl as a music format. Polyvinyl has been one of the higher profile independent labels in recent years as they have put out some critically-acclaimed albums and bestsellers that includes Canadian band, Alvvays, American Football, British indie pop band Kero Kero Bonito, noise pop band Deerhoof that also recently performed in Manila, and American Football whose latest album, LP3 is sure to make many a year-end list. “Jay Som is one where I honestly can’t remember the first time their name came up,” Hassen discussed about how the Filipina-American landed on Polyvinyl’s sights. “But I do remember Matt Lunsford -- the person who started Polyvinyl with his wife Darcie -- really latching onto (the Jay Som song) “Turn Into”. I think it was originally released by Topshelf Records as part of a cassette subscription series they were doing, so that was an instance where some music was already out there and Melina had started to build up a pretty rabid following on Bandcamp. There were definitely other labels that were interested in working with her, but she ended up partnering
with us because she really liked our values and our reputation, and we’re so incredibly grateful that she’s part of the family. She’s so talented and it’s really inspiring to see how much she’s grown as an artist in just a few years as far as moving to LA and setting up a home studio to record not only her own music, but other people’s albums as well.” The Guardian called Anak Ko, “subtly impressive” while Pitchfork said the album “sounded exploratory and playful, like a jam session among friends that’s just hit its stride.” The song “Superbike” is Anak Ko’s first single. Illinois-based American Football which is on their second act as a band after breaking up following their 1999 debut album has seen their career sky rocket since their reformation in 2014. They since released two albums and the band has been a festival favorite. The indie post-rock band recently came off a successful Asian tour with Manila as one of their stops. Hassen noted of the band’s meteoric rise, “The whole phenomenon of American Football is definitely not something that anyone ever predicted. They had basically broken up by the time LP1 was released so the fact that 20 years later they’re still around, playing shows with two more albums under their belt, is really a testament to just how intense of a connection people have felt with that record over the years.” The third album, LP3, features guest vocals by Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell, Paramore’s Hayley Williams, and Land of Talk’s Elizabeth Powell, has been a solid best-seller. “It’s not the #1 best-selling album in PV’s catalog” clarified Hassen, “but it’s definitely the one that has sold the most consistently year-in,
year-out. I think everyone -- us and the band -- felt some trepidation about the idea of getting back together because sometimes the expectations that build up over time are just impossible to meet. But honestly, I feel like they’ve done the best that anyone possibly could under those circumstances and I don’t think their legacy has suffered at all. LP3 certainly feels like they’ve turned a corner and are comfortable with the music they’re making now and the direction they’re headed. I think having the guest vocalists and the different instrumentation on LP3 really helped solidify the idea that they’re not the same band that they were as college students in 1999 and that’s ok. In fact, that’s a good thing! I’m excited to see what comes next for them.” Regarding the return of vinyl as a format, the numbers have been good for Polyvinyl. “We’ve been making vinyl since day one of the label starting, so it was really just an added bonus when LP sales started to increase across the board. It wasn’t like we decided to hop on a trend -- vinyl has always been integral to Polyvinyl (it’s in our name after all) and it’s even more so now that it’s such a popular format. Vinyl really feels like the best opportunity we have to connect with people in a tangible way in an era increasingly dominated by streaming. I started out in mail order and I still love the idea of putting an LP into a cardboard mailer with an Airhead and some extra goodies and shipping it out in the mail -- knowing that the person on the other end is going to be really excited when they see the package and everything inside of it.” The resurgence of the music market has also an effect on the company’s fortunes. From a small office space, the company moved to a much bigger building in Champaign, Illinois and now has satellite offices in San Francisco, Philadelphia, and New York. Their artist roster has jumped to
39 solo artists and bands. “Before we moved to our current space, we rented a spot for 10 years in a multi-story office building that was not equipped to receive the kind of deliveries a record label receives,” recounted Hassen. “We were on the second floor and there was no freight elevator access on that level so every time we received a shipment of records, the entire staff would stop what they were doing, grab carts, head downstairs on the regular elevator, unload boxes of vinyl oneby-one by hand off the truck, stack them on the carts, go back upstairs, unload the carts, and then go back downstairs in a continuous loop until everything was unloaded. I cannot begin to estimate how much of my life was spent doing this and also figuring out places to store all of this product in various rooms and closets and auxiliary spaces we rented throughout the building.” “We’ve always had a very DIY mentality where we work as hard as we can on behalf of our bands. I mean, Matt and Darcie started out putting together a fanzine and selling records at VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars) hall shows and we still do record fairs and make zines for some releases. It’s funny how the more things change, the more they stay the same.”
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SEPTEMBER 01 , 2019 | soundstrip.businessmirror@gmail.com
Sound trip BusinessMirror
MUSIC ON PRINT
More Japanese Anime Music in this year’s Cosmania By Ysabel Andrei I. Rodriguez Photos courtesy of Cosplay Mania
C
OSPLAY Mania 2019 will take place this September 28 and 29 at Halls 1 to 4 of the SMX Convention Center Manila in Mall of Asia Complex, Pasay City. For its Japanese Anime Music (JAM) concert this year, the Japanese artists who will perform includes MYTH & ROID, Asaka, Yasutaka Nakata with Ichigo Rinahamu, May’n and virtual youtuber Mirai Akari. Stageplay actors such as Allen Kohatsu and Kousuke Asuma will also grace the event as guests. The organizers will also bring seiyuu or voice actors such as Motoko Kumai and Rumi Okubo. Cosplay Mania would not be also complete without cosplayers BoiledCurry and Rea Kami from Singapore and Japan. MYTH & ROID is a Japanese pop rock band which is composed of composer and producer Tom-H@ ck (guitar and bass) and Hotaru on keyboards. The group also has multiple vocalists. The band made its debut in July 2015 with the release of their first ever single “L.L.L” for the anime Overlord. Their music was also featured in various anime such as Boogiepop wa Warawanai, Saga of Tanya the Evil and Re: Zero - Starting Life in Another World. One interesting trivia about them is their name that comes from two words which are “myth” that represents the past and “roid” from the word “android” that represents the future. As of 2019,
Drum Tao
T
HE sensation from Japan Drum Tao returns to Manila September 5 – 8, 2019 for the first time at the Theatre at Solaire
their new song “shadowgraph” was used as the opening for the anime Boogiepop and Others. While, the coupling track “Remembrance” was a theme for the movie release of The Saga of Tanya the Evil. The band is currently touring internationally, including the Philippines. Another Anisong artist to grace the event is Asak, a karaoke contest champion from 2014 to 2015. Her debut single “Open your eyes,” an ending theme for the anime Occult;Nine, was released in October 2016. As an Anisong artist, she has released songs for animes such as “A Centaur’s Life”, “Laid-Back Camp”, “ISLAND” and “YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love at the Bound of this World”. Moreover, Asaka also appeared at the substage of the “Animelo Summer Live” in 2017 and at the main stage in 2018. DJ, record producer and composer Yasutaka Nakata will also jam at the event together with Ichigo Rinahamu. Aside from Yasutaka Nakata’s notable acts and tunes with Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, Perfume and MEG, he has his own unit called CAPSULE together with Toshiko Koshijima. Nakata is the DJ and music producer while Koshijima serves as the vocalist. His music is influenced by top producers such as Madeon, and Porter Robinson to name a few. His latest works are “Digital Native”, “Future Pop” of Perfume and with a new show Rhythm of Tribe, Time Travel Chronicles combining martial arts, choreography innovative contemporary Japanese production with costumes designed by Paris collection fashion designer Junko Koshino.
“Japamyu” of Kyary Pamyu Pamyu. Recently, he has collaborated with Kizuna Ai and Daoko. Ichigo Rinahamu is an idol, DJ and producer. She is a previous member of Akishibu Project and is now a current member of CY8ER. She calls herself as “Hamrig” when she has DJ projects. Another guest in the line-up is May’n, a solo pop artist in Japan. She was a finalist in the 2003 Hori Pro Talent Scout Caravan “Love Music Audition.” She made her major debut in 2005 with her first ever single “Crazy Crazy Crazy.” In 2007, she was chosen as the singing anime voice for Sheryl Nome for the anime Macross Frontier. From then on, May’n released many songs for anime, dramas and movies and her singles and albums even topped the charts in Japan. In 2008, she collaborated with Megumi Nakajima and Yoko Kanno for the single “Lion” and even appeared on TV in the same year. May’n is
an accomplished Anisong and J-Pop artist since she already had five solo performances at Nippon Budokan and Yokohama Arena and a world tour in 2010. Among the countries she visited are Germany, Korea, China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Philippines and Singapore. In 2017, she released the opening song for the anime Restaurant to Another World, titled “One in a Billion” with the idol unit Wake Up, Girls!. Her latest single with Megumi Nakajima is “Good Job!” which was released in September 2018. Cosplay Mania 2019 will also feature a virtual youtuber Mirai Akari, who debuted on October 27, 2017. Akari calls herself “princess of ego searching” and she was also illustrated by KEI who also designed Hatsune Miku. Mirai also collaborated with Kaguya Luna, Dennou Shoujo Siro, Kashiko Mari and a lot more. Her cover of Crusher-P’s “ECHO” is one of her popular videos on YouTube.
Drum Tao is adored across the world after playing to over 8 million people in 24 countries including Spain, Australia, Germany, UK, Netherlands, USA, Belgium and Singapore with their timeless drumming performance. Audiences will be captivated by an evening of beats, rhythm, melody and extraordinary precision featuring the super human efforts of the highly disciplined crew of Japanese Taiko drummers. “The highly acclaimed debut of Drum Tao in Broadway will represent not only Japanese entertainment but Japan itself” – Newsweek “Supernaturally fit and superbly trained…stunning. Fully deserving of the standing ovation” – Herald “The One-of-a-kind show which brings family and friends together for a spectacular evening of world class arts & music”
Ticket Prices VIP – P5,600 Gold – P4,816 Silver – P3,920 Balcony A – P2,800 Balcony B – P1,400 *Exclusive of ticket fee and ticket protect WSeptember 5 to 8, 2019 The Theatre at Solaire Thursday to Sunday Tickets are available online through Ticketworld.com.ph or Ticketworld outlets nationwide Use Promo code: TAO2019 to avail 15% off Vip / Gold / Silver & 10% off Balcony Group & Corporate bookings: Drum Tao PH or 09173331372 Brought to you by: ShangriLa Plaza, Toyota, Daiso Japan, Fuji Xerox, Sharp, Ippudo, Remy Martin, Cointreau, Lightwater, Philippine Daily Inquirer, Travelife Magazine, Japan Foundation
South Africa’s youth are deserting the party of Nelson Mandela
I
N the South African township where Nelson Mandela joined the struggle against apartheid, Lordwick Nxumalo is reduced to hustling for a living. Each day, he and other young jobless men of Soweto hang around on Walter Sisulu Square, waiting to take passport pictures for documents like driving licenses. The licensing office boss, who owns the camera, pays 10 rand ($0.65) per customer. It’s not much: Nxumalo says he lives in a shack and is “busy getting more poor.” The 29-year-old’s predicament is common in Kliptown, a Soweto district seared in memory as the site where African National Congress leaders including a young Mandela gathered in 1955 to adopt a constitution. There’s a memorial to the ANC’s freedom charter on the square, but Nxumalo isn’t impressed: he’s had enough of the party that has brought little relief to his community despite ruling for most of his life. “I loved the ANC since I was a child and when the elections were there I just checked in and voted for the ANC—I didn’t think too much,” he said. “But the ANC that I’m voting for gives me nothing: We have no jobs, no housing and we’re struggling for electricity.” He said he won’t vote for them again, because “nothing is changing for us.”
Pressing needs A QUARTER of a century after the end of the repressive system of institutionalized racism that made South Africa a global pariah, the same forces that freedom unleashed—the right to free movement and a thirst for education—threaten to bring down the party that won black South Africans their liberty. Facing the tide of an increasingly youthful, urbanized and educated electorate that cares more about pressing daily needs than tales from the struggle era, the ANC looks vulnerable. But it’s also accelerated its own decline. In the first decade after apartheid, the ANC government received widespread praise for improving services, reducing poverty and creating a thriving black middle class. While some of that rapid social and economic progress had slowed by the time Jacob Zuma assumed the presidency in 2009, his scandal-ridden tenure alienated many voters too young to remember South Africa’s transition to democracy. Today, the ANC is struggling with a stagnant economy that’s failed to significantly narrow the widest income-inequality gap in the world. Unemployment of 29 percent is
NHLANHLA NGOBESE WALDO SWIEGERS/BLOOMBERG at the highest level since at least 2008, the majority of South African municipalities are suffering more power and water outages, and state corruption is rampant.
‘Dirty games’ THE results are all too evident in Kliptown, once a heartland of ANC resistance on the outskirts of Johannesburg, where young people now say they’ve lost patience with the party. It was here, 64 years ago, that ANC leaders ratified their famous document that opens with the inspirational “the people shall govern.” Now crystal meth smokers loiter on street corners as unemployed youths while away their time at roadside cafés, or try and make ends meet by selling curios and impromptu tours to tourists. Nhlanhla Ngobese, 34, sells bead animals at a stall outside a museum in Soweto’s Orlando West district, where Mandela once lived. The museum commemorates Hector Pieterson, a 12-year-old boy shot by police who was photographed dying in the arms of a fellow student in the 1976 Soweto Uprising, a key moment that led to international sanctions on the South African regime and bolstered the ANC cause. An ANC member, Ngobese doesn’t have much respect for the party now. “Too much corruption and fighting for position, that’s all what it’s about today,” he said. The youth don’t vote now, he added, disillusioned by “dirty games” and the fact “they’ve been waiting for promises for two decades.”
Extravagant claims AS yet, there are few political alternatives to the ANC. The official opposition, the Democratic
7 BusinessMirror
Alliance, is hamstrung by the perception that its roots in a party that represented white liberals during apartheid means it still has that minority’s interests at heart. Its abandonment of firm policy positions has, to some, made it resemble a less convincing version of the ANC. The Economic Freedom Fighters, a populist group that split from the ANC in 2013, attracts some of the economically disenfranchised with fiery talk of nationalizing everything from land to banks. Still, its support is capped as a result of comments by its leaders widely condemned as racist, and extravagant policy claims such as 10-percent annual economic growth forecast under an EFF administration, when post-apartheid South Africa has never exceeded much more than 5-percent growth. While the ANC under President Cyril Ramaphosa won 57 percent of the vote in general elections in May, that was its lowest total in the six national votes since apartheid. What’s more, its support among young people was about 50 percent, dropping to 25 percent of all those people with a university degree. Its base is largely rural in a country where two-thirds of people now live in urban areas, compared with just over half in 1994.
New order TODAY 8.1 percent of South Africans have a degree compared with 2.9 percent at the advent of democracy, and close to a third of the population is under 35 and old enough to vote. “On demographic trends alone there is now enough to justify bringing the prospect of an ANC electoral defeat in 2024 onto your strategic planning radars,’’ the Johannesburg-based Centre for Risk Analysis SEPTEMBER 1, 2019
said in a recent report. “What seems apparent, though, is that the political structure that has defined South Africa since 1994 is crumbling and that a new political order will come to replace it.” The implications for South Africa are at once momentous and unclear. If the ANC is pushed below 50 percent support in the next election, the country will face coalition rule, the nature of which is hard to predict as there are no natural allies among the parties. South Africa’s short-term future is thus likely to be one of unruly tie-ups of groups with little in common, defined by instability and policy paralysis. Johannesburg and Pretoria already have unlikely coalitions in municipal government.
Fundamental yearning SOUTH African politics has, meanwhile, followed more advanced western democracies in North America and Europe into polarization, with the ANC split between hard left and nationalist factions and few remaining centrists in the mold of Mandela or fellow former president, Thabo Mbeki. That’s led to “a fundamental yearning for a moderate center-left representation for the urban middle class,” said Claude Baissac, the head of Eunomix Business & Economics Ltd., which advises on political risk. The opportunities for anyone able to meet that desire are “huge,” he said. A new political dawn can’t come soon enough for Lindiwe Anna Dlamini, 24, who is unemployed and has never voted. “We haven’t had electricity for three weeks. Nobody comes to fix it. We need jobs,” she said as she waited for a takeaway of white bread and a fried egg in Orlando West. “Unless there’s big change, I won’t vote.” Bloomberg Opinion
The children of Asia’s elite are leaving home earlier than ever
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HILIP TSUEI was just 12 years old when his parents sent him 7,000 miles from home to attend middle school in the hills of western Massachusetts. “It was pure dread,” said Tsuei, now 23. “It was like I was sentenced to death. I just counted down the days.” Still, he knew it was his “duty” to study at all-boys Eaglebrook School in Deerfield. His brother also matriculated there as part of what Tsuei, who hails from Taiwan, described as the first step in preparing for the collegeadmissions sweepstakes. Wealthy Asian families have long viewed US universities as a golden ticket to help ensure their children’s futures, but a growing number are looking to get an early edge on the competition. More and more families, increasingly from China, are sending their kids across the Pacific to attend “junior” boarding schools. While few in number, these exclusive middle schools—which can charge as much as $74,000 a year—offer a potential route into top private high schools that feed the most prestigious universities. “It’s only natural that the next step was for those families to look at the junior boarding schools, because they felt like it would give them an upper hand,” said Rick Dickson, managing partner at Dunbar Consultants, a New Yorkbased educational consulting firm.
Steady growth
THE size of this niche market is
hard to quantify. At the Fay School, the number of foreign applicants for the upper boarding school (grades 7 through 9) has grown steadily in recent years, according to data provided by the Southborough, Massachusettsbased institution, while American applicants have remained relatively flat. The same “exponential growth” has been seen at Deerfield’s Bement School, according to Head of School Chris Wilson. Eaglebrook, meanwhile, has seen such an influx from China that it established a program to assess English language proficiency and filter Chinese applicants, said Admissions Director Christopher Loftus, who declined to give specific numbers. John Rao, now 21, was among the pioneers. China’s rigid, examinationbased education system wasn’t the right fit for Rao when he was 13, so his father, who ran a tech company, looked into him studying abroad. A decade ago, it was rare for families to send their kids halfway around the world so young. But for Rao, attending Hillside School in Marlborough, Massachusetts, seemed too good an opportunity to pass up. In his local school in Shenzhen, “my grades were fine, but I couldn’t see myself doing a lot of things I liked to do,” said Rao, who went on to enroll at Westminster School in Simsbury, Connecticut, and now attends Massachusetts Institute of Technology. East Asian students make up the majority of international secondary students, but the growth is driven primarily by China and South Korea. In 2018, despite slowing growth, Chinese students made up 37 percent of all international secondary students in the US, according to a presentation from the Institute of
International Education. Tsuei’s alma mater boasts an endowment of $100 million, according to web site Boarding School Review, and an 800-acre campus that includes its own ski slope. Other schools, such as Fay, Bement and Rumsey Hall, also have eight-digit endowments and bucolic campuses that rival those of some universities. Fay, the oldest junior boarding school in the US, has 10 fields, eight tennis courts, four basketball courts, two outdoor heated pools, two fitness centers, an indoor turf facility and an indoor rock climbing wall, according to its web site. But one of the main draws is the relationships they have with some of the most competitive private high schools, Dunbar Consultants’ Dickson said. Many graduates go on to attend such schools as Phillips Academy Andover, Phillips Exeter Academy, Choate Rosemary Hall and Deerfield Academy. “We all knew, implicitly,” said Tsuei, who later attended Loomis Chaffee School in Windsor, Connecticut, and New York University. “Almost the first thing we hear is: ‘Which high school do you want to go to?’”
Feeder schools
AT Cardigan Mountain School in Canaan, New Hampshire, about 80 private secondary schools send representatives to meet with prospective students each fall. High school admissions directors often visit personally, sometimes dining with ninth graders to chat informally about their plans, according to the Bement School. “After attending junior boarding school in America, many students go on to enroll in some of the most competi-
tive secondary schools in the world,” according to the Fay School’s web site. “In turn, these top high schools are considered ‘feeder’ schools for Ivy League colleges such as Harvard, Princeton and Yale.” Beyond country-club amenities and academic connections, such schools also offer foreign students the opportunity to learn in more flexible environments than many of their home countries, while also getting an early acclimation to US culture. That can range from something as subtle as understanding references to The Simpsons to gearing up in preppy Vineyard Vines fashions.
‘Small pond’
MANY of Rao and Tsuei’s classmates were sons of high-ranking executives at global conglomerates, they said, and stories about lavish vacations and private jets highlighted the wealth at Eaglebrook. Parents who send their children to junior boarding schools are often successful entrepreneurs who were also educated abroad and understood the value of having a US diploma, said Yuan-Hsiu Lien, who teaches Chinese at Eaglebrook. “In many ways, you’re in this small pond with big fish,” Tsuei said. “But not because the pond is relatively small, it’s because they’re actually big.” But leaving one’s family so young can be challenging. For the longest time, Tsuei said he yearned to go home. “Sometimes I would feel like, ‘Why do people like us, people like smart kids from Taiwan or other parts of Asia need to come here in order to feel like they could get a better chance in life?’” Tsuei said. “Isn’t it enough to stay in Asia?” Bloomberg Opinion
Shopify’s success puts spotlight on next Canadian tech stars
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HOPIFY Inc.’s scorching rally and Lightspeed POS Inc.’s successful trading debut this year are throwing the spotlight on who might be the next Canadian tech star to go public. A total of C$1 billion ($751 million) was invested in 142 venture capital deals in the first quarter, up 48 percent from a year earlier, according to the Canadian Venture & Private Equity Association. More than half of that was in tech and increasingly from US investors. Here’s what the founders of some of Canada’s hottest tech firms are saying about the future of their companies, and the potential for initial public offerings:
justifies a large stand-alone business,” D’Souza said about the possibility of an IPO.
Clearbanc CLEARBANC offers $10,000 to $10 million to start-ups to help fund their marketing campaigns on Facebook, Google and the like in return for a flat fee and a share of revenue. The Toronto-based investment firm, founded in 2015, raised $300 million in new funding led by Highland Capital Partners of the US, the largest disclosed VCfinancing this year in Canada. That brings total funding to $420 million. Clearbanc plans to offer $1 billion in financing this year and is interested in funding parts of a business that could turn into a repeatable revenue stream—infrastructure, shipping and sales commissions.
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Wattpad
MIKE KATCHEN GALIT RODAN/BLOOMBERG It’s expanding outside the US and Canada, where there’s a less-developed venture ecosystem and “banks are more conservative,” according to cofounder and Chief Executive Officer Andrew D’Souza. “We think that the fundamentals of the business, the market opportunity,
SEPTEMBER 1, 2019
WATTPAD Corp. may no longer be a startup but its ambitions just keep growing. Founded as a mobile-reading app, 12-yearold Wattpad now calls itself a “multi-platform entertainment company.” The Toronto-based company has provided content for one of the most re-watched movies on Netflix (The Kissing Booth), a Hulu series (Light as a Feather), and this year a Hollywood feature film (After), all through Wattpad Studios, launched in 2016. Bloomberg Opinion