Oops.

Everything's a mess.  Photos I posted, gone!

Whelp. There's a  first for everything. Going to have to edit some posts soon!

On where I am now

Thinking of the many things I could do to make the business better. Because my parents aren't getting any younger. Because people from our town rely on the business for income. Because everyone needs to see that a sleepy town like Santa Ignacia, Tarlac can. Because the world needs more Filipino designs. Because the planet needs to see what recycling can do.

Thinking of how our business setup is the same as other small businesses in Tarlac or in the country, in general. That locals rely on businesses like ours to eat 3 meals a day, to turn dreams as real as the four walls that keep us safe and the diplomas, certificates, curriculum vitae in our hands. That our respective governments no matter how small the number of people in our employ will somehow recognize how this matters a lot to them. That the materials we use, really just to be discarded as trash can be a family of five's and many families of five's daily breads: the life blood of a community. That much has been done to make something out of nothing, but more to be done to turn something into everything. Everything we need. Everything we want. Everything we live for.

Thinking of what I can do. What I want for myself. What I want for these people who are extensions of my self because they are the reason why I love what I do and I do what I love. Because they are the reason I'm where I am now. Because it was by my parents' dedication to raise good children that I have been placed in the field of design and entrepreneurship. Because it was by my family's and friends' presence that I know what it is to be dependent and independent, and being either or neither in weaknesses and strengths are secondary to a shared experience because family is family. Because it was by the care of my manang (I miss her bitso bitso and her inangit) and her joys and the joys of people like her that have taught me the things that matter. Because it was under the tutelage of my mentors and teachers and personal heroes that I was equipped to hurdle all the challenges that came my way. Because it was by the sweat of these people's brows that I am where I am now, and for that I am immensely thankful.

May I be able to plan for all these things, and that everything will fall into place. That I may have faith in the grand scheme of things, in others, and in myself.

- Written on a bus trip from an exports seminar, 04/26/2018

Process - Designing a Logo for Ayos Lomboy Dairy Producers Cooperative

Here's a stub on my logo design for Ayos Lomboy Dairy Producers Cooperative.

About the client...

Ayos Lomboy Dairy Producers Cooperative is a cooperative of carabao (Bubalus bubalis carabanesis) farmers based in Nueva Ecija. Besides selling raw milk, they process these into milk drinks like chocolate milk, "lactojuice" and ready-to-drink pasteurized carabao's milk.

Their existing logo was a graphic representation of a carabao from the rear, them hoping that the udder's gonna be obvious.  Of course, with the creature's mammaries under that bulk of a body and between two legs... it was just no.

One DTI associate even said that it looked more like they were showing the animal's anus. LOL.

The brief was as simple as it gets.

"Kayo na bahala sir"

"May gusto po ba kayong kulay oh ano?"

"Black and white na lang siguro sir kase kalabaw at gatas itim at puti lang yan."

Gotta love clients like him. 😂😂😂

I read the cooperative's M-V statement. As expected it's very much anchored on uplifting the lives of carabao farmers.  The beast is practically almost as holy to them as cows are for Hindus. HOLY COW.

There's your idea.

And thus:

The making of the divine carabao.

What better to use as a halo than the rising sun, symbol of bright beginnings! I scratched this up on Photoshop in a jiffy.

I moved to illustrator for some high octane (lol) vector action:

Cause fragments make shapes look like stained glass panels, reminiscent of holy places.

The sun-halo was actually done in a separate layer, cause you know. In case the sun can be made into a different style.  I actually wanted to do something reminiscent of the Philippine flag's sun, but figured it'll be too much to render, and could have too complex meanings...

Sun halo on a separate layer.

...when all I want to show is some good old carabao lovin' seven days (for the seven rays) a week. Yassss 😎

Here's the final product against a very rural background, cause we need to be a wee bit hipster just like that:

The Divine Carabao Icon for Ayos Lomboy Dairy Producers Cooperative.

A Trip to Santa Teresita, Cagayan. July 2017.

Santa Teresita, Cagayan.

It's a fourth class municipality found in what I called bunbunan ng Pilipinas.

Three hours from Tarlac to Manila, twelve hours from Manila to Tuguegarao and two hours from Tuguegarao to Santa Teresita. I had to endure a total of seventeen hours of travel to conduct another training.

Santa Teresita is a very quaint town. No ATMs here. No mainstream franchise retaurants.  It may sound like the urban lurker's nightmare but what it has makes up for what other places lack: a lot of pretty sceneries, good food, hospitable people and natural resources.

Glorious Cagayano specialty batil patong is also available in Santa Teresita.

Among these resources are what locals call bakong. A semi-aquatic plant that kind of resembles pandan grows along the edges of lakes and rivers.

I found out that Santa Teresita has these growing in abundance.  Sometimes to the length of six feet. Now these plants apparently are excellent for fiber production.

I also heard that the local government unit has partnerships with the Design Center of the Philippines in developing textiles from bakong fiber.

Mayor Lolita Garcia of Santa Teresita, with her town's bakong fiber. Photo taken here.

There's even a training conducted (at the same time as my bamboo crafts gimmick) by some ladies from nearby Quirino province where bags of different shapes and sizes were made from weaving bakong.

I met the lady who championed the industry for her people, the same woman who requested assistance from DTI-II, without whom my trip wouldn't be possible. Mayor Lolita Garcia, CPA is a woman who was very much dedicated to her dreams of a better Santa Teresita. The facilities they've invested on the bakong processing hub, the variety of product samples in her office, and my very presence in Cagayan would be proof enough.

She told me about how Santa Teresita used to be so poor. Her municipality, in my opinion, is really fortunate to have someone with a records-savvy mindset for mayor.  Mostly, if not everything's accounted for, from natural and human resources to events and even some items as small as the municipal slaughterhouse's records.

We had a brief exchange of ideas on how her constituents have skills for crafts, and how her municipality can make use of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources's National Greening Program to start and eventually maintain a healthy bamboo industry in Santa Teresita. It was a brief but mentally satisfying meeting of the minds, nothing short of a fantastic prelude to my next few days in town.

My participants came from four municipalities: Santa Teresita, Allacapan, Buguey and Gonzaga.  The former two being landlocked and the latter half being coastal towns.  To them I was introduced by two fine DTI-II associates, Richard Siuagan and Marivic Calvo.

The workshop went on for 5 days, and there was plenty of room for experimentation for the participants.

Some participants were adventurous enough to go beyond what's prescribed.

Nothing like the smell of bamboo.

Participants used two varieties of bamboo, kawayang tinik and bayog. However, one participant brought over this variety he called Chinese bamboo.

Look at the size of that beauty!

With its vast resources, native materials and local industry, Cagayan is set to be known for greatness. With great resources, amazing talent and unwavering hospitality, Northeastern Luzon is a definite must-experience for travelers.

The grandeur of Cagayan skies embracing the rolling plains, mountains and seas of the province sort of remind me of picturesque scenes from Studi Ghibli films. 

Found A Bird in the Bathroom & It's Not What You Think

I was working on some labels at around 10:30 in the evening when my younger brother hurried down the stairs more excited than usual. "Kuya may owl sa banyo!" he expressed with much joy.  Minutes later something in his brain clicked and he said "I'm a wizard!"  His excitement turned infectious.  Dad was all smiles, and my sister was already posting on Facebook about getting her Hogwarts letter.

Just the owl. No Hogwarts letter was found.

The weather was pretty chilly, winds were blowing and the rain just finished.  The night was cold.  The owl could be just seeking refuge for the night, and so we let it stay.  My younger brother decided to take a bath somewhere else,

And he was still there by morning.

I absentmindedly walked into the bathroom the morning after, and saw the owl staring at me. I panicked a bit and quickly walked out the door. The size of that thing's talons could easily gouge my eyes out.

Manong Marcial came and took the owl from its shower curtain perch. It was rust brown in color, with orange-ish eyes and feathery horns.  I did a little bit of research and found out that it's an immature Philippine scops owl.

As it turns out, these were pretty common back in the day, and now they live in small forest patches where trees are tall, out of reach of felines, canines and whatever's supposed to be preying on them.  They live alone or in MONOGAMOUS PAIRS. CUTE.

Adorable, isn't it?

We've posted these in social media.  We heard stories from a cousin saying he knew someone who kept an owl as a pet, and some manongs and manangs saying they had one.  We were getting comments from people asking if they can adopt the owl.  Some were asking us to keep it and name it.  But, really, we don't know how to feed it, don't know any sicknesses he could get, how we'll keep him healthy and all so we decided to turn him over to the Department of Environmental and Natural Resources.

He was a real hit.

With these big black eyes, how could you leave it locked up forever?

The associates of DENR Camiling loved the owl the moment they saw it.

DENR's going to check for any injuries and disease before they release it to the wild.  Hope it grows up strong with lots of healthy owlet offspring!

Turnover papers. 

I'm a Mentor.

SO I WAS AWAY!

I'm so sorry. I've been busy so here's an excuse me post.

I've been around product design and development for quite sometime now, with a little experience designing for Woodinspirations Crafts since I was in college and then a whole plethora of other manufacturing enterprises in my three years with the Department of Trade & Industry Tarlac.  That's a spread of about 7 years developing designs for both food and non-food clients.

It was just last year, however, that I've seen a program as comprehensive and enriching as DTI & GoNegosyo's Mentor Me Program. In a nutshell, it's all about some 20 entrepreneurs to be taught business by local experts identified by DTI, accredited by GoNegosyo's Philippine Center for  Entrepreneurship (PCE).

I wanted to sign up for the program as a mentee, as they called the entrepreneurs, but apparently DTI had other plans.  They forwarded my resume to PCE and...

I got accredited.

Holy smokes.

And so started my being a product development mentor to MSMEs for the Kapatid Mentor Me Program.

As of this writing, I've mentored for two provinces already, Tarlac and Bataan.

The course content's been given by PCE, inclusive of the following topics:
1. Are You in the Right Business? Assessing Congruence of market needs, one's passion, skills and competitive offering.
2. What is a Product? Elements of a Product Idea. Different Kinds of Products
3. Needs & Wants, Concepts & Designs of Products
4. Problem- Solution method
5. Innovation mindset

I've added with this the section that I call "Responsible Product Development" which is a little talk encouraging MSMEs to go green, and how going green will affect their businesses and of course, their lives.

My Mentor Me Module 4 is like a brief condensation of several of my usual topics on branding, marketing, product development with a little extra, too.  Here are some photos:

Kapatid Mentor Me Program's Launching at Tarlac Events Place. Photo (c) DTI Tarlac

We're the mentors of Tarlac! Proud to be the youngest of the lot. Photo (c) DTI Tarlac

Alien? Jk. In class facilitating a recitation portion of the lecture. Correct answers get free lychee jellies. Photo (c) DTI Tarlac 

Showing Ms. Ofel product trends for 2018. Photo (c) DTI Tarlac.

Class picture! Photo (c) DTI Tarlac

Hope I get to teach more people!  Thanks to Go Negosyo's Philippine Center for Entrepreneurship, and the Department of Trade and Industry.

I get to take pics when no one's looking :)

Workshop: How to Make Bamboo Instruments by Titus Del Rosario, February 25 2017

Musical instruments have always been a wonderful thing. Making art, and sculptural pieces is one thing, but creating a tool which one can use to make more art I think is more magical.

It was early February when I was invited by my friend Roi Calilung to attend this workshop organized by the Angeles City Tourism Office.  It was all about making bamboo music instruments and as bamboo and music are two of my many interests, I was glad to participate.

The workshop was taught by Mr. Titus Del Rosario. My friend tells me he's a music enthusiast, but of course I'm pretty sure there's absolutely more than just that. I'd like to apologize firsthand, because when I walked in he was simply smiling at me and said "Are you here for the workshop? Okay, go get two bamboo poles here, a thin one and a thick one" and I did just that, no questions asked. Haha.

The two pieces were apparently for two different instruments.

The first one is for making a "bamboo buzzer." Locally known as a bungkaka.  It's a striking instrument that creates a sonorous sound when struck.  According to C. Dioquino in Philippine Bamboo Instruments, these were used by Cordillerans to drive away evil spirits when in forest trails.

Bungkaka, also known as balingbing are percussion instruments originating from the north men. Image not mine. Original image found here

The second instrument is a flute. According to Mr. Del Rosario, the flute he taught us was a combination of two styles.  He explained that flutes from up north were played with one's nose, and those coming from the islands down south are played with a mouthpiece. He combined these two styles to come up with this, still somewhat traditional Philippine flute.

A Cordillera warrior playing a nose flute. Image is not mine. Original image found here.

The bungkaka is fairly easy to make, however the slits made on the bamboo are very sharp and can easily slice one's finger. I cut mine and I could proudly say that my blood and sweat went into making this one.

The bungkaka I made. 

It takes a very short while to create these instruments as they required very little by-the-unit precision. Most measurements were done by, as we joked about it, tantsameter.  "We're Filipinos, not Germans." Mr. Del Rosario said, as we did measurements using only our digits.  This proves to be difficult though, as I have slender fingers, therefore instruments of my make can only be played by those with a similar build.  For an average human, I guess the holes on my flute were too close to each other and probably impossible for fatter fingers to play.

This longer flute I did first, but Mr. Del Rosario had trouble playing it as my fingers on the slim side. So I decided to make another flute...

... which happened to be a lot shorter.

I adjusted the holes so that they'd be more ergonomic, therefore easier to play.

It was a brief experience, but nonetheless very educational and entertaining too. Mr. Titus Del Rosario, and some of the other organizers were very supportive. They even performed with some bamboo instruments.  I'd be able to make more stuff with these now! 😁 Abangan!

Group photo with Mr. Mike Pangilinan, Mr. Edille Paras, some guy,  Mr. Titus del Rosario and Ms. Niña Dela Cruz.