EPIC FAIL!

Sorry guys, this is just so late. I wrote this 7 weeks ago.

I am not happy with the Pilipinas Kay Ganda brand. It was such a pathetic attempt from the brainless DOT. It is two strokes from a porn site and too close to be Polish. And have mercy, this one is in Tagalog. As if the whole world could understand what it means. I don't think I would go to Croatia if their marketing slogan is HRVATSKA, TO JE LIJEPA. It's a stupid slogan. It's simply won't sell. Really. I wanted to rip the guts out of the DOT Undersecretary that wasted 5 million bucks for a so nonsense output. What's his name? Ah, Enteng Romano - what an idiot!

Shame on you Sec. Lim. Stop defending your amateur-ish project. You're just making a fool out of yourself. You said it's a result of a rigorous research, huh. And how long is that again, four months? FOUR FNCKING MONTHS! Nice try Sec. Tell that to the morons. It also amaze me that people can be paid gargantuan pesoses for a very mediocre work like this. Heard that Yolly Ong and friends? Ironically, you guys doesn't have a lot of grey matter in your brains.

If those geniuses at the DOT had only use their imagination- even a bit of it, why not make use of the tag line “More Than The Usual”. I personally love it, yeah, I love it more than “Wow Philippines”. And it's ad is probably one of the best tourism ads I've seen along with “Forever Young” and “If you've been waiting, you've been waiting too long”, both from New Zealand.

Why not reinstate “Where Asia wears a Smile” slogan? It’s probably one of our best tourism taglines ever. Isn’t it that we are known for our hospitality and cheerful spirit? There’s such thing as ‘truth in advertising’, so we better capitalize on it.

The DOT said that they wanted to put out Kay Ganda just like Hawaii’s Aloha and Japan’s Sayonara. WTF! Seriously, if the DOT wants a Filipino word, it should be Mabuhay Philippines.

It’s also 100% guaranteed that we have some of the best beaches in the world so why not “Philippines, Life’s A Beach”. But then, it could also mean Life’s A Bitch and the CBCP people won’t like that, that fo’sho.

And I’m also in favor of “Destination: Paradise Philippines”. It’s pretty. Who came up with this? Nice suggestion dude. Or what about, my personal suggestion, “Philippines More Than You Can Ever Imagine”? Now, that’s what you call c-a-t-c-h-y. It’s like an interesting country to visit and who wouldn’t want to travel to see that.

But hey, “Pearl of the Orient Seas” is still the best – hands down. Why don’t we just snatch it back from HK? They don’t deserve to be called as such.

I have no problem believing that the (brainless) DOT had the best of intentions in wanting to replace “Wow Philippines” with something new. Unfortunately, it is inferior in every angle to the old one. That’s a consistent problem with this administration so far, GOOD intentions but a FAILURE to deliver.

A message to the DOT: There are still millions of people who do not know where the Philippines is exactly located and who do not know how we are called, yet you have the creative and brilliant idea to market our country in our native language. Epic fail!

GAME OVER!

In case you haven’t heard yet, Asian Games is over. And for Team Philippines, it was a nightmare – but not as horrible as the Pilipinas Kay Ganda, which for me is a total disaster. It is so funny that we are just eyeing for four (!) medals – but in a struck of bad fortune – we only got 3 gold medals (no typo-error there, it is really t-h-r-e-e) while the Great Wall of China got 199. Schucks! We also got four silver and nine bronze medals which placed us at 19/45. It is our worst performance since 1998.

Add to my dismay, there was no media coverage of the event. Holy crap! It’s such a shame that even NBN didn’t cover the grandest sporting event in the continent. Isn’t that government-owned station have automatic rights to cover these kinds of spectacles? I’m not just sure though.

I’m not discounting the efforts of PSC and various NSAs but I believe that sports program in the country is so half-assessed. I know that our athletes can do much much better, given with proper support and training.

Here is my two-cent worth of (sensible) suggestions:

# 1. Why not build a sports academy? A world-class sports facility that will train potential medal earners. Where to get the fund, you may ask. Congressmen have P200M worth of pork each – why not share some of it to the athletes? Greed is a mortal sin, remember?

#2. I watched last Monday’s I-Witness episode and I learned that the monthly training allowance of our athletes is just between P5,000-P10,000. I think it’s very small. Is it possible if our national athletes would be paid with salaries rather than allowances? Then make them members of Philhealth, Pag-Ibig and SSS/GSIS, be entitled to 13th month pay, paid vacation and sick leave and a monthly pension after retirement.

#3. Let us concentrate on other sports aside from boxing, billiards and basketball. I’m thinking of archery. What you think? Archery doesn’t require the height of a basketball player or the power of a boxer. It only require skills and mental power, lots of it. Filipinos have all that.

#4. Let us send more athletes. We send more free-rider officials and their spouses than athletes. It’s an official trip, meaning taxpayers are footing their expenses, so perhaps we need to keep eye on this. Those officials are just after the free tour, anyway. We all know that so don’t argue.

#5. Pirate Chinese coaches. Or if not, train our athletes in China. Why not? They are world champs in almost everything. In the 2010 Asiad alone, they got 199 gold, 119 silver and 98 bronze medals, yeah, believe it or not.

And oh, before I forget… Let us put the rebels to good use. They are good in shooting, right? Why not get a medal for it? Lol, just kidding.

During the olden days, way before I was born, the Asiad is something that Filipinos look forward to. But now, it seems that most of us are losing interest. It made me sad that we, supposedly the savviest techie in this part of the world (I am thinking that if there’s an Asiad event for netsurfing, Filipinos would bag the gold, silver and bronze altogether. It’s a no brainer.) doesn’t capitalized on our internet prowess to significantly boost the confidence of our athletes. And it’s kinda disappointing.

Anyway, congratulations to Rey Saludar (boxing), Biboy Rivera (bowling), Dennis Orcollo (cue sports) and the rest of Team Philippines, regardless if they brought home a medal or not, for putting up a good fight in Guangzhou. My hugs, kisses and salutations!

TO TOP THE BOARD EXAM!

This shameless mudslinging and bickering of review centers against each other is getting on my nerves. It’s kinda pathetic and deeply insults the intellect of the students. They’re pandering to us like we’re bunch of morons. The hell!

They need money and this is a competition – yes, I know that for a fact. So, why I making such a big deal out of it? Of course, it is only appropriate that they must uphold at all times civility, discipline and respect for one another. They must always give the highest regard to the students, to appeal not to our emotions but to our intellect. We’re not after the drama; we are after the good results.

If we want to eradicate this BS practice, we must not tolerate it on the first place. We must start choosing a review center that believes in our innate potential to make it no matter what and therefore, recognize their sole responsibility to prepare us for the grand battle – that is the board exam.

But this “BS-mudslinging-thing” taught me that no review center will ever be free from error- not even one. So my task is to determine which errors I cannot live with and which one I can allow. It taught me that I must appraise every review center equitably for everything they have to offer, for what they have done, for what they have failed to do and most importantly, for the way they treat us.

So, I will take this opportunity to quantify in words my decision to choose SULTAN REVIEW GROUP.

One of the things I really admire about SRG is the way they maintain positivity amidst all the accusations being thrown at them. They never gave in to pressure and sling the mud back. They just clear the issues out and it’s up to us if we will believe it or not. There are very few that are capable of this.

I also cannot help but admire Prof. JP Jacomille, one of SRG’s topnotch reviewers respond to criticisms. He has no gimmicks/no fanfare/no entertainment in his lecture, something that may render the class weary and disinterested. But for me, that’s not an issue. His focus was to share in the best of his ability his knowledge, techniques and expertise and make sure that everyone has fully understood it. For this, he earned my salutations!

I cannot impose my will to you. I don’t write this to sway you in my thinking. I am not asking you to agree with me nor enroll in SRG even if you don’t want to because that would be a grave insult to your intellect. What I’m asking you is that you must weigh down your decision as objectively and as intelligently as possible and not just base it on malicious and misleading hate propaganda. You must be staunch enough to stand by your decisions without others butting in. Don’t let others make up your mind. Remember this is our future and this will only be up to us.

Jubert John R. Marzan
Reviewee, SRG Legazpi

I'll just make this short...

Oh my gawd! The first thing that came into my mind after seeing this photo is “I NEED TO FNCKING POST THIS”. I’ve seen a number of proposed logos for the proposed Manila Olympic bid but this one is so oooh-some. It blew me away.

& the kicker is: IMAGINE IT OURS. :))) Anong sinabi ng logo ng London or Beijing?