‘Promdi’ women still fashion conservative but now experimenting – fashion guru

DAVAO CITY – The women of the provinces are beginning to get bolder in experimenting in fashion but remained largely conservative, the country’s known fashion guru said on March 23

Generally though, the Filipina women across all areas are getting fashion-conscious, and are seen more often getting chic and primed up for work, to meet up with friends or go shopping, said celebrity fashion designer and consultant Liz Uy.

“The women in urbanized areas in the provinces are not even far in fashion as their Manila counterparts. And it’s a good thing,” she said.

She expressed surprised too, at the quick sale of her book, Stylized, Liz Uy’s 10 Style Essentials. Since January this year, 35,000 copies have been printed, and at her book signing at the SM Lanang Premier here, it took her more than four hours to finish the long queue of “fashionistas” seeing her signature and snapshots.

She said she also enjoyed a recent television feature of her work and experience doing fashion get-ups for celebrities.

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Davao City musicians vie for top spot in Converse Philippines Get Loud band search

DAVAO CITY, The Philippines -  A five-member band using a combination of indigenous and electronic instruments would shoot for the top spot in the search for new musical talents, confident about its song about the environment with ethnic strain could bring them to the spotlight in the finals this month.

Jad Montenegro, the band that took its name from its lead vocalist, was currently doing the rounds of FM stations and gigs in hotels and corporate functions, and promoting the music search alongside a call to also vote online in its favor.

Jad Montenegro (center) lead vocals and songwriter of the band 

The group has been selected to vie for the P150,000 top prize of the Converse Philippines Get Loud, which organizers said was a “campaign to celebrate music, creativity and the talented Filipino artists”.

The contest would be strong in the songwriting skills and artistry of Filipino music bands.

Four other brands were selected to represented their respective city: Even of Baguio City, representing northern Luzon; Brisom of Metro Manila representing the national capital region; Kissbone of Taytay, Rizal, representing southern Luzon; and Bethany of Visayas representing the whole central island group.

Jad Montenegro would perform The Escapist, a song about confronting the ebb in a relationship, backed by haunting musical of electronic and indigenous instruments.

Jad Montenegro penned the song, as with the rest of the band’s songs.

Jad, performed solo here after she returned from college in Manila, but later formed the band that carried her name.  She had won Best Pop Artist in 2009 at the Muzika Del Sur Awards and won Best Music Video in 2010 for her song The Backyard.

The band released their first commercial songs on June 22 last year, and were sold out before their set started.

“Jad's haunting melodies, vocals, lyrics, soulful guitar riffs and non-standard tunings are gaining for the band a reputation of being different, wise beyond their years, and able to deeply connect with their audience,” a commentary in their album bearing the band’s name, said.

The band, Even, describing its music as “dark and melancholic”, would perform Luminary. Brisom would do the Waking Lives, written along the lines of soulful indie rock. Kissbone, a hardcore and rock metal band, would perform Distance and Motion. Bethany would do the Moving On, also embodying the alternative rock music that the band has been doing.

Finals would be on November 9.

Aside from the top purse, the host would give P100,000 to the first runner-up, and P60,000 and P40,000 to the next two runners up.

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watch for upcoming new, different entries.
just hibernating for a while over stacked up piles

Ateneo stude offers new way to unmask faces

DAVAO CITY, Philippines – An information technology project here with a potential to revolutionize law enforcement got one of three Best Projects award this year of the government science agency and a commercial bank.

The project demonstrated the capability of a software to remove masks and mustaches from faces of people in photographs, with processing speed of only six to ten seconds, said Charmaine B. Espinas, a computer science graduating student at the Ateneo de Davao University, and a scholar of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST).

None of this technology has been in use in any of the government law enforcement and regulatory agencies according to the scanning of literature when the project was undertaken during the first school semester last year, she told an interview she granted at the Ateneo campus on Friday.

Only Japan and India have used this technology by their law security agencies, she said, citing results of the scanning of available information in the Internet.

The project was titled “An Offline Terminal-based Beard & Mustache Removal Using Sparse Matrix Representation for Feature Detection”, one of only two IT projects and a biology project that the were awarded P25,000 by the DOST and the Bank of Philippine Islands in their annual search for best IT, science and engineering projects by graduates.

In a DOST posting, Espinas was quoted as saying that her study “would prove helpful in handling security issues, citing the importance of image manipulation when needs arise”.

“Imagine images of criminals who use artificial beards and mustaches to hide their identities. There is definitely a need to unmask them,” she said.

The software was capable of generating the original face and skin texture after removing the hair outgrowths such as beards and mustaches, and was tested in 20 sample photographs lifted from the Internet.

“This may not be a super perfect but I think this is a breakthrough, especially in security matters,” she said.

She took interest at pursuing the capability of a software, trying to take a different route taken by many other graduates, who she said, were commonly drawn into algorithms, or programs that offer solutions to IT certain requirements, and network programs.

“I wanted to try a different path in the image manipulation field,” she said and expressed thanks at the support extended by her mentors, including that of a Jesuit scholar, who had been teaching IT and computer science here and abroad.

She said the project interested her “because it involved visual and graphical outputs”. “I like to research on things that are significant to others, even to those who are not experts in the field,” she added.

There had been no inquiries yet on the prospects of her project, although the BPI already offered her a managerial job.

Espinas won the “Best Projects” during the 2011 BPI-DOST Science Awards, along with classmate Joyce Ann J. Nacorda, with her software to restore pidgin texting language in the Internet chatting sites to their normal Tagalog translation, and Jenny Marie Quiao, also an Ateneo student of biology.

They received plaques, cash awards, and an opportunity to work at any BPI branches. They were awarded on February 11 at the Ateneo campus here.

The annual BPI-DOST Science Awards “encourages budding scientists and researchers to scale higher levels of excellence in their chosen fields”, the DOST said. The Awards started 1989 to recognize outstanding young men and women from all over the Philippines “whose efforts made them excel in specialized fields of science, namely: mathematics, physics, engineering, chemistry, biology, and computer science”.

end

Mainstreaming bat conservation

dumbfounded, so to speak at getting nearest to a swarm of . . . well, the bats.

Swarm, not a streak of only one as we experienced it during childhood, while we happened to pass by a mansanitas tree, a little taller than a shrub and produces
very small apple-like soft fruits.

this time, i am speaking about millions - the Guinness say the Monfort Bat Caves in Samal Island off the Davao Gulf, where bat scientists, enthusiasts and ecological advocates trooped to on January 26 to launch the 2011-2012 International Year of the Bats.

yes guys, you read it right, year of the bats, not the astrological year of the rabbit. well, as we also heard it during the speech of the Bat Mama, the founder of the Monfort Bat Caves and Consevation Foundation, Inc., that bats, much like the rabbit, are a bane to population control crusaders - bats are pregnant year-round, giving birth twice a year.

back to the launching, the bats just swarmed in and out of the five mouths of the three caves - hollowed out from a promontory at an equally breath-taking beach resort Samal is famous for in this little nook of the world,, and overlooking the well lit Davao City coastline. The bats swarmed, and twirled, and flap their wings, the uric smell notwithstanding, as they engage in their nocturnal fruit-hunting and feeding, for the next five hours or so, lasting before midnight.

The Monfort bat caves host to the world's largest concentration of fruit bats, and in their nocturnal feeding, they are estimated to fly as far as 40 kilometers from their abode. Farmers attested to their presence in the fruit-bearing area of DAvao City, in the Calinan area about 30 kilometers northwest of downtown.

Bats, unknown to many, are nature's natural pollinators, and growers of durian - the king of Philippine fruits, with threatening thorn-like spikes around the rind - attest to the bats' valuable contribution during fruiting season. to those who heard and seen the durian and heard of anecdotal notoriety about the durian smell, no, they dont smell like hell. they just smell, just like any real tasty fruits inviting all and sundry to partake of nature's bounty.

and back to the bats, before they continue to be shrouded in mysticism and suspicious underworld traits, they provided the natural background to the global launch of what would be also a global push to persuade governments to mainstream bat conservation, not only on environmental consideration - maintain the food chain, but also on untapped economic benefits to the local economy in terms of increased income to fruit farmers, but also to revenues that may be derived from declaring the abodes of bats as eco-tourism destinations.

as what a bat conservation leader based in Austin, Texas said, sometimes politicians would hearken to the economic arguments and benefits, than to even take a glance at environmental statements.

Outstanding barangays show excellence in fiscal management, dispute resolution

DAVAO CITY – For showing management skills in fiscal administration, dispute resolution and other local government functions, barangays here were accorded honors by the prestigious civic organization, Junior Chamber International (JCI)-Davao, which announced that they would continue the search for the outstanding barangays after finding inspiration from the excellent work of the rest of those areas which participated..

Barangay Matina Crossing, one of the populated but strategically-located barangays in a southern intersection of the city, bagged the top honors for their outstanding work in several categories, including the top awards for dispute resolution and cleanliness and beautification.

Barangays Calinan Poblacion, about 30 kilometers north of downtown Davao, got the award for its fiscal management; Barangay Wilfredo Aquino, in eastern downtown area, and named after the barangay captain who was killed in the 1980's, was honored for its innovation in peace and order; and Barangay Bucana, for its projects in community development.

Steve Arquiza, executive director of the JCI said that the top-performing barangays showed remarkable efforts in the various categories, and a scan on the scrapbooks that all paraticipating barangay submitted to the JCI indicated big leaps in management of the local government offices.

Barangay Captain Pedrito Angco of Calinan Poblacion, for instance, said that the barangay government “never exceeded in expenditure than what is allotted to us”. The barangay received P2 million in annual allocation.

Arquiza said that many participating barangays also tried to stay within the budget limit to avoid getting themselves into unwanted loans. He said that none of the barangays showed innovation though, in finding sources of funds for emergency expenses, which incidentally, were not also reflected in their declarations.

The scrapbooks on the fiscal management of the barangays were submitted to the Commission on Audit, which the JCI tapped in the search for outstanding barangays.

In the resolution of disputes, Barangay Captain Joel Santes of Matina Crossing, said that an average of only 10 percent to 15 percent “eventually get elevated to the courts in the 600 cases that were lodged before its Katarungang Pambarangay.

The law has mandated all cases to pass through the barangay justice system for mediation and reconciliation. The dispensation of barangay justice has been acknowledged to be the main contributor to the declogging of court cases.

Many cases were about physical injuries and oral defamation, and civil cases, Santes said.

Nominated barangays in the various categories received P10,000. Those which were nominated for the semi finals received P20,000. Barangay Matina Crossing, which bagged the top honors, received another P20,000.

EJ Lim, project manager, said that they would continue their annual search project and encourage the sectors to send their suggestion on improving the conduct of the search. The group has wanted to “highlight the importance of leadership excellence in the barangay level, encourage cooperation and pro-active participation by community members in addressing barangay issues and to recognize the various accomplishments in the barangays”.

Govt not giving up on balancing the budget, sets eyes on 2013

DAVAO CITY – Malacanang has resurrected its ambitious target to balance the budget, originally set to 2010 if not for the global financial crisis that needed capital infusion into the economy, and the Department of Finance said it was setting its eyes on 2013, and getting at par with the developed economies in Southeast Asia by 2016.

“But it would also depend on the superiors of the next administration,” Finance Underscretary Gil Beltran, in a briefing with news reporters on December 17 at the Marco Polo Hotel here.

“We are looking at 2013 to balance the budget,” Beltran said, saying that at prevailing performance of the economic indicators would indicate that by 2012, “we would be growing at five to six percent”.

He said that the external debt situation and the poverty ratio that declined slightly, for instance, would not affect the roll onto a balance budget by 2013, saying that the current economic performance would carry much of the needed boost toward the objective and that many of the economic reform and development requirements would be addressed by financing of the Millennium Challenge Corp. (MCC).

Beltran said that the MCC would finance about $500 million of the development projects of the country. The announcement came despite the country's failure to pass the anti-corruption test of the MCC. The MCC measures the policy performance of 93 developing countries that are candidates for grant assistance from the US government’s Millennium Challenge Account (MCA). The Philippines passed only five of the 17 indicators that the MCC examines.

The MCC is a US government corporation designed to work with developing countries, based on the principle that aid is most effective when it reinforces sound political, economic and social policies that promote poverty reduction through economic growth.

In addressing poverty, Beltran said that this would be largely addressed by the big amount allocated to microfinancing, which stood at P6 billion, of which only half was availed. “We still have P3 billion more for this financing.”

A primer released by the government's Investor Relations Office (IRO), showed that the country's economy “continues its growth story as the government's Economic Resiliency Plan (ERP) paired with economic, fiscal and financial reforms continue to deliver positive results”.

“The Philippines is among the few economies in the Asian region that escaped recession even at the height of the global financial crisis,” the primer said, which stressed on the economy's success in posting “uninterrupted growth” for the succeeding 35 quarters since 2001.

The gross domestic product has continued posting positive growth of 0.8 percent in the third quarter thi syear, from 4.6 percent in the same quarter last year. Growth benefitted from the positive performance from finance, private and government services, and the trade sub-sector on the supply side. On the expenditure side, the IRO said that the growth was contributed by government consumption and public construction.

The gross national product grew by 3.5 percent in the third quarter, propped by the increase by 26 percent in the net factor income from abroad.

Foreign remittances by overseas Filipinos reached $12.8 billion as of the end of September, with an increase of 8.6 percent annually.

Foreign direct investment also recorded a net inflow of $1.3 billion in the first eight months, despite the global recession. The number this year represented 35 percent increase compared to the figure last year of only $977 million.

Inflation was also kept low at 1.6 percent on year-on-year basis by end of the October this year. It was 0.7 percent in September, with an increase noted in the aftermath of the devastating typhoons in the third quarter.

Yet, gross international reserve already stood at $43.2 billion, enough to sustain eight months of imports of goods and payments of services and income.

Beltran said that debt payments was also slashed by P10 billion due to smaller interest payments. It stood at P340.8 billion for this year.

“We would expect it to be getting smaller until 2016 when we would hope to be at par already with our developed neighbors in Southeast Asia,” he said.