Found Pictures

Amazing Show Cebu 5th year anniversary outing and celebration held last year sometime October.

screen golf

Virtual golf is lots of fun... it's not gonna burn you since you're playing in an air-conditioned room with real balls, real clubs on a virtual field in front of a giant screen. Given the rainy season, this is the way to go.



from left; PSSupt. Mar Valerio, Amazing's Baek isanim and myself



light moments

the MFC bar experiment

Truth is, we're pretty short on resources these days that things get harder to be done, so we strive on experiments and make-do tactics for our survival. The MFC bar is one such experiment... a cozy drinking place at the Manila Film Center where one can relax and unwind after a day's work.

I had most of my stuff brought down from my studio so that we'll some provision for music. I got some old stuff from other places in the building to complete what we needed like the display stands that now act as the bar area. The tables and chairs are from the restaurant we use to operate in Kalibo.

My marketing consultant asked for four parasols from mild seven, additional signage from San Miguel including glasses, ashtrays, etc.

If it catches on, then maybe we'll spend some real money developing the concept.



(upper right) my driver posing at the "temporary" bar, (lower right) my secretary and my security officer at the barbecue cook stand, (lower left) with some Korean colleagues and acquaintances, (upper left) the half completed signage of Amazing Show.



Here is my interpretation of what the bar should look like in a couple of weeks...

the bet!

I made a bet with the Art Department a month ago that I'd treat them to drinking if they would finish the amazing show signage that I ordered them to complete and mount. The same signage that took my executives a zillion years to decide on simply because they were thinking of having it made by professional signage companies. Of course, that meant spending an arm and a leg so the project went on to become unaccomplished for a long time.

I was in outdoor advertising my early years as a poor struggling musician and teacher and I was taught by one of the best in the industry... Petronillo N. Pepito, Sr. or Mang Pete. I was his apprentice of a kind helping me make ends meet during my time of depression.

The problem was that in making these decisions over the signage, I found the amount to be spent ludicrous given what I know. And as a company, we've been spending more than what has to be spent because we always undermine the capacity of our employees... or perhaps because it was easier to have it done by people outside. And since I did find it silly to spend and given that there was nothing to spend, I decided to have it done in-house... and alas, we spent about a tenth of what we were suppose to.

Most important, I had a blast reliving my past occupation for a day.

Happy 15th Birthday, Mica!

She wanted a violin for her 15th birthday so I got her one last Sunday. I wish I had her dexterity shifting from one instrument to the other... by the end of the same day she was playing twinkle twinkle little star. Enjoy the new instrument, Mica!

The Unnecessary…

Days like these are not that uncommon… days feeling emptiness despite the myriad of headaches and challenges one faces on an everyday basis, days pretending to be normal and happy despite doing what one allegedly likes doing… allegedly…

Most say that there are the essentials and non essentials in life. I just say that classifications are what we make of it.

What is necessary is to be happy…

Is your pride worth a couple of million?

I get to the office a couple of days ago and was informed that the internet service was down… much like everything else, there always seems to be a parallel occurrence in my house and this office. I’ve been having some bad connections with my DSL and apparently, changing the modem did not help. Here at the office is a more flabbergasting story.

Apparently the President of the company that runs our internet service simply ran away leaving his six employees unattended and at the mercy of their clients. What was apparently a profitable business was heavily mismanaged and is now in debt amounting to Php1.6M.

It really puzzles me as to how a person doing well in business could bungle up something like this. After his employees had an audience with me yesterday, the guy allegedly withdrew what was left in their account, which was about half a million pesos and fled to Korea leaving them with the business by signing over his share to his supervisor. But what do you do with a business that is already in debt?

But that seems to be the trend nowadays, a lot of Koreans who were making good in this country over the last decade are steadily opting to go back home because the market is no longer theirs to control in the first place. But the behavior remains unacceptable. Closing a business is an option, but make sure that it is done properly and with the utmost amount of concern and sensitivity to the people who has worked alongside you all this time.

And that’s the reason I haven’t had the chance to blog lately. Since opening up the bar at the MFC, I’d go home in the early morning and wake up noon time or past that, then back to the office. Today, the internet service is back after one of the Korean owners who knew nothing about the problem reported in to me yesterday night that everything would be back to normal within the day. Hope everything turns out well…