We beg to differ.
Farewell to Ralph McQuarrie, the man behind such timeless and culture-shifting Star Wars characters as Darth Vader, R2-D2, and C-3PO. He was 82 when he died in his home on Saturday the 3rd of March 2012. McQuarrie joined George Lucas in 1974 to help conceptualise what were to become the defining images of the blockbuster…
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Recently, a renowned financial expert in the United States, Suze Orman, was in town for a series of talks about personal finance. Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) brought her over as part of their financial wellness advocacy. Naturally, one of the things she focused, and expressed concerns about, is the Filipino attitude towards money….
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The most recent cover of FHM Philippines — a popular men’s magazine that features scantily-clad women as its main selling feature — made global waves after it featured starlet Bela Padilla posed in a brightly-coloured bikini surrounded by black models in black bikinis. The tagline at the bottom screamed “Stepping out of the shadows” in…
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According to presidential adviser on political affairs Ronald Llamas, he is sorry for being an enthusiastic patron of pirated (illegally copied and distributed) DVDs because he is “no longer a regular guyâ€. I wonder then what this says about the typical regular Filipino guy? I have many times in the past asserted that Filipino government…
Read More “Pirated DVDs: Ronald Llamas’s apology misses the more important point” »
Filipinos choose to measure progress from a Western perspective (mainly financial wealth and capital-intensive development). Thus a “successful” Filipino individual as measured by contemporary Filipino society fits the standard Hollywood mold — big house, party lifestyle, trendy clothes, shiny car, and flashy mobile devices. The trouble with Philippine society is that we embrace the superficial…
The newly unveiled tourism slogan “It’s more fun in the Philippines†by the Department of Tourism (DOT) received mixed reactions from Filipinos. First, the lack of originality was again highlighted after social networking pundits discovered that Switzerland used the exact same slogan in 1951. What shocked and annoyed some Filipinos is that similar accusations of…
Read More “Why we don’t need to emphasize that it’s more fun in the Philippines” »
Sorry. This is going to be another article that breaches the let’s-not-go-there-please barrier. Fasten your seatbelts. I find it a bit distasteful that we’d be celebrating what a supposedly “fun” place the Philippines is. So I heard today; It’s more fun in the Philippines. That’s the new tourism slogan recently unveiled by the Philippines’ Department…
Roughly translated in English and taken out outside of the context of homosexuality that it is commonly associated with, the Tagalog colloquial word kabadingan in a cultural sense is a contemporary concept that describes a spectacle of loud contrived crassness or obnoxiousness in both behaviour, design, and aesthetic sensibilities that is indulged in for its…