Bohol Arts Festival 2011

The 1st Bohol Arts Festival is an artist-initiated, artist-run event for artists and the Bol-anon community marks the first and biggest gathering of creatives in Bohol, in a three-day celebration and exhibition of Bol-anon arts, culture and creative camaraderie.

Mission

With the theme Himugso: The Bol-anon Arts Renaissance, the Bohol Arts Festival 2011 aims to:

1. Foster community appreciation for the arts, including fine, dramatic, musical, performance, literary and applied arts and architecture, as well as other modern arts such as analogue and digital photography, digital arts, film, body art, industrial design and many others;
2. Encourage local artists to showcase their art and become more involved in the Bol-anon community;
3. Unify the Bol-anon artists in the different art disciplines and genres to promote more collaboration between Bohol creatives; and
4. Boost the Bol-anon culture and arts community, in general.

Visit the Bohol Arts Festival website here and support their Facebook page here.  Here’s a short-film entry from James Famador.

Update: Here’s another short-film entry from TheRLVproduction entitled “Friendchip”.

Massimo has an upcoming Photo Book on Bohol which I posted here.

Bohol, Philippines is both a travel article and a book project by Massimo Casal who is now based in Jakarta. This 6-page preview features Bohol’s finest beaches, some history, must-go-see places and exquisite photography.  So if you haven’t set foot in Bohol, download the said preview in PDF format here.

Massimo studied as an engineer.  His work has given him the opportunity to travel around the world and particularly around Southeast Asia. Through his travels he has cultivated his love for photography.  He also has great sets from Hanoi, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand, Taiwan, Europe and the Philippines as well.
Visit his website at Casal Photography or join his Facebook page here. You should also follow him on Twitter here.

Of Love, Ironies and Ice Cream

I don’t want to fall in love,
‘Cause every time I do, I get heartbroken.
Although it’s the kind of feeling that I’ve been missing,
Falling out of love makes the world harder to live in.
Places bring out memories and memories bring out tears,
Tears bring out depression and depression lead to eating ice cream.

Ironic how memories seem so fun when it happened,
But hard to bear when you’re looking back at it.
Ironic how one day you care and love somebody,
But hate and forget them in the end.
Ironic how love brings out so many good things,
But I’m writing it in a poem full of negatives.

Oh, I just don’t want to fall in love.
Not because I push away the love approaching,
Or because nobody has swept me off my feet,
But because I’m still putting back all the pieces of my heart
That was once beating and complete.

(kat 9/20/11)

Automated Attendance System

I don’t know if you’ve heard this from the HNU Dampas Campus, but the Computer Engineering Department just tested the AAS (Automated Attendance System). It’s a simple program designed and programmed by Charles Migriño on Visual Basic. It’s a quick scan of your ID and you’re logged in into the attendance list. No more crappy paper mess, stubs, signatures and the like.

A similar system is now being used by other universities outside Bohol and they’ve been using it for quite some time now. I sometimes wonder why we can’t advance to something like that. Young innovators are dime a dozen and they ought to be given credit for thinking ahead.

Though the project is still in it’s infancy stage, during the demonstration it was stable and scanned 300 student IDs in 5 minutes. A printout of the attendance list was immediately available for printing and was posted on the bulletin board.

For more information of the said project add Charles on Facebook here or visit their page on Eye Tricks.

A Photography Contest - Exhibit

Island City Mall, one of Tagbilaran’s oft-visited mall and shopping center is turning 7 this year.  In celebration of it’s 7th anniversary, ICM is holding two big events:  A Photography Contest – Exhibit and the ICM Runniversary.  More details on the posters below.  For more information, follow Island City Mall’s official Twitter account at @IslandCityMall.

This is a very good opportunity for photography and running enthusiasts to demonstrate their skill, talents and abilities.

A Photography Contest - Exhibit

If you haven’t seen ICM’s commercial, well here it is. Directed by Ted Ramasola, giving visitors a glimpse of ICM.  This video is now currently showing on local cable and digital cinemas.   You can now also follow Island City Mall on Twitter @IslandCityMall.

Bohol Chronicle Homepage

Earlier this year, we pointed out on our previous post about Bohol News Sites on how they are lagging behind web standards. Last week though, we saw some quite improvements on Bohol Chronicle and The Bohol Sunday Post.

The Bohol Chronicle homepage is now cleaner with less ads and a jump button back to the top page. Still no feed though and I’m not quite sure if there’s an archive for previous posts.

Share and Discuss

A couple of good improvements are on sharing and discussing of articles. The site uses Facebook’s comment platform. Users must logged in to Facebook in order to comment.

The Bohol Sunday Post Homepage

The Bohol Sunday Post website is still under construction, but we see it is using a grid-based design. Both sites are powered by Bohol-Island and designed by Ajotm.  This is a good move indeed on both sites and a good improvement, yet, there are still a lot of grounds to cover if they are going to adhere to web standards.

Seaview

One of the lessons I’ve learned on traveling is you do not only go to places just to see the sight and take pictures.  As much as you are immersed in a new place, take time to know and learn the local people because what is place without its people?  Bohol is not much different.  The way it is been promoted today is totally wrong.  Yes, it surely does draw quite a crowd but a lot of people are missing too much if they haven’t known the Boholano.

I’ve been to places I’ve never expected to be.  These are places that I read on a Sibika at Kultura books when I was in elementary.  I was fascinated about the sites but what fascinated me most were the local people on the area.  They are the ones who taught me much on how to speak “po” or “opo”.  I’ve acquired their taste for spicy foods and I’ve seen also their areas of strengths and weaknesses.  I have learned so much that the experience changed me before I came to the place.

A couple of co-workers just told me that early January both of them went to Bohol and it was quite a shock when I’ve learned on how much they’ve paid for the whole package.  If they have told me they were going beforehand I would have contact some friends and they might cut their expenses in half plus they would not have been hassled with all the transfer of transportation.

Seaview

Kanlungon

When I tour friend and relatives, I don’t bring them to the expensive resorts (sure, we drive up to some of them just to see the place), I bring them to I know what’s best.

Now this is a boholana in New York taking her own music genius to pay tribute to the land we love. It describes a peaceful and quiet sunrise in Bohol. The one thing I love about Bohol is waking up to something like this.

Personally I would not want Bohol or even Tagbilaran City to become a bustling metropolis like Cebu or Manila. Our family loves the feel in Bohol, it still has the very feel in a province yet somehow the city also provides you your essential needs. Going back to the song, this is rendered in Cebuano but here below is a translation of Chiray’s hymn to Bohol.

Dawn sky

How sweet it is to listen to your silence
Kissed by the cool breeze.
Singing nothing but silence
…Whistling last night’s memories.

Dawn sky

Who would’ve thought that after the
darkest night, light would come
shining gloriously behind the horizon
Looking down on us.

Dawn sky

Rising in the dawn sky
You are my blessing
This is the land I love,
where I am most loved.

And With my first tear,
You gave me heaven.

J.LO Tarsier Logo

J.LO the tarsier was conceived upon doodling one afternoon shift (3-11) at work while waiting for the next shift to receive me. What started out was a search of a good tarsier vector but I could not find none but I did bump into KalyeShrits’ “Bohol Brown T-shirt” and well, inspiration followed.

J.LO Doodle

J.LO means the letters used in the logo. One J, four L’s (small cap) and 11 O’s. This is my limitation. I wish I can draw and how to use Adobe Illustrator but time does not permit due to work and other stuff but I really do want to learn. All I can do for now is to mix and match resources.

The J.LO Tarsier Logo was tested using Quadranta by Darim Kim, later I also tested with Piron by Typedepot. My brother and I preferred the later but some friends and my sisters, the loved the former. I still don’t know what to do with this logo though, I was thinking of printing it on shirts. We’ll see.  By the way, it’s a Tarsier not a rat.

J.LO Tarsier Logo on Quadranta