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38th MMFF: Thy Womb

2013-01-15T17:55:00Z

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I was a bit disappointed with last year’s crop of Metro Manila Film Festival entries. Among the eight films, I only had interest in watching three: Thy Womb, El Presidente, and Sisterakas (in decreasing order of preference). Thy Womb received numerous accolades at foreign film festivals and that’s the main reason why I was interested in this Brillante Mendoza–directed piece. And since Thy Womb was threatened to be pulled out of theaters due to poor performance at the box office, that was the first film I saw.

Thy Womb tells the story of Shaleha (Nora Aunor), the wife of Bangas-An (Bembol Roco). They are a Badjao couple living in Tawi-Tawi, the southernmost province of the Philippines. She works as a midwife but ironically is not able to produce any offspring for his husband due to her infertility. She finally agrees to let Bangas-An take a second wife and most of the film is spent depicting the couple’s search for a bride.

So what did I think of the movie? The one word I would use to describe it is educational. The movie had no overarching plot and I daresay is a slice-of-life kind of film. There was hardly any conflict or climax and I found the post-climax scenes quite abrupt especially when compared to leisure pace of the rest of the film. So I wasn’t particularly impressed with the film as a storytelling vehicle, but I was very fascinated with its depiction of Badjao life and culture.

Living in cosmopolitan Manila and being connected everyday to the Internet, I found the contrast with Badjao culture enlightening. I’m sure Direk Mendoza did plenty of research for this film and seeing the lives of our Muslim brothers in the south was very educational. People in Tawi-Tawi live with bandits, insurgents, and the military the same way people in Metro Manila deal with traffic jams. I was also a bit surprised that they still practice arranged marriages there and that it is the groom that pays the bride’s dowry. There was also a lovely episode in the film depicting a Badjao marriage and reception (with Mercedes Cabral as the bride). While Thy Womb placed dead last in the box office among the MMFF films, I feel that the film would be better served by including it as required viewing in the Araling Panlipunan (Social Studies) subject in high school.

Brillante Mendoza lamented how foreigners loved the film, but Filipinos are not supporting it. Well, having seen Thy Womb, I have no doubt that the film can be popular in the international film festival circuit. However, I think that the the average Filipino and also mainstream foreign audience would find the movie quite boring. So I don’t fully agree with Mendoza’s statement that the foreigners love the film. The most financially successful films are the ones that provide entertainment and sadly, Thy Womb is not that kind of film.

P.S. I have two additional quibbles with Thy Womb. First, as a Filipino, I find the Tagalog dialogues from the non-Badjao actors a bit jarring, especially when they are answered back in Tausug. But to foreigners, it’s all Greek to them so they would not be really distracted by it. Second, I really find it implausible to see Lovi Poe as the Bangas-an’s second wife (not really a spoiler). She’s far too pretty for such a role.

P.P.S. Jessica Zafra’s review is a good read.

This article is an entry in Eugene Alvin Villar’s blog, vaes9. View the original entry.

Documenting the Philippines’ Cultural Heritage

2012-10-21T05:34:00Z

Below is the speech I gave as President of Wikimedia Philippines during the Awarding Ceremonies of Wiki Loves Monuments Philippines 2012 held last night, October 20, 2012, at the Filipinas Heritage Library in Makati.

Ladies and gentlemen, good evening.

They say that a picture paints a thousand words. Well, as cliché as it may sound, no writer can explain a complicated concept better than a well-done illustration. No amount of words can describe the the location of a place better than a well-crafted map. And no length of flowery language can adequately show the beauty of arts and culture than exciting videos, lively music, and colorful photos.

For instance, the Miag-ao Church, one of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the Philippines, has a beautiful relief facade that is quite hard to describe. Here is what Wikipedia has to say:

The central feature of the bas-relief facade is a large coconut tree which reaches almost to the apex. On the church’s facade the coconut tree appears as the “tree of life” to which St. Christopher carrying the Child Jesus on his shoulder is clinging to. The lesser facades feature the daily life of Miagaowanons during the time. Also depicted are other native flora and fauna, as well as native dresses.

While that description can use some improvement, I think we can all agree that even for someone gifted with a vivid imagination, he would be hard-pressed to picture how exactly the bas-relief that adorns the front of this Baroque church looks like by just reading the article.

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Even though Wikipedia has become the world’s largest and most popular reference work—thanks to you, the editors that create and maintain the articles, and the readers that patronize this wonderful project—its articles lack illustrations, images, and photos to show what mere words cannot explain. And for cultural heritage sites in the Philippines, we actually lack both: photos and articles.

So in Wikimedia Philippines, we organize projects to build up Wikipedia and its sister projects in the country so that the whole world can learn of the unique blend of Eastern and Western culture that has made the Philippines what it is today. We hold Open Web Day events and workshops in colleges and universities to teach students how to contribute and write articles for Wikipedia. And on the visual side, we hold photo contests like Wikipedia Takes Manila, which was held in 2011, and Wiki Loves Monuments, for which we are having the Awarding Ceremonies tonight.

Wiki Loves Monuments is a worldwide photo contest aimed at generating photos of world heritage and cultural monuments and where all pictures are released under open copyright licenses. The annual contest started in 2009 in the Netherlands, became a Europe-wide competition last year, and is now a worldwide event in 2012. In fact, the Guinness World Records has recently awarded last year’s event as the largest photography competition in the world. Well, they would now have to update their records since this year is even bigger! 15,000 users from 36 countries and territories have uploaded more than 361,000 photographs.

I am particularly pleased with the turnout in the Philippines. 2,300 entries totaling more than 7.4 GB of data were submitted by 319 participants. This makes our country the 15th highest by number of participants, and we have uploaded more photographs than countries like Norway, South Africa, Switzerland, and Denmark.

But, more than the prizes, the numbers, and the world records, we hope to encourage more Filipinos to help in documenting our cultural heritage. We need more photographs and articles in Wikipedia. And as we aim to show through Wiki Loves Monuments, you don’t need to be a skilled writer to contribute to Wikipedia. Just go out, visit our cultural sites in the country, take photos, upload them, and let the whole world see that it really is more fun in the Philippines.

Thank you very much and good luck to all the finalists!

This article is an entry in Eugene Alvin Villar’s blog, vaes9. View the original entry.

Ang Nawawala

2012-09-24T16:39:29Z

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At times it felt too long, and I find the premise a bit implausible, but Marie Jamora’s Cinemalaya film Ang Nawawala is easily the best film I’ve seen so far this year.

When I read Philbert’s 4.5-star review of the film and then a friend’s declaration on Facebook saying “I guarantee it will be one of the best films you’ll see this year”, I knew that I had to see the movie. And so I hauled my ass off to SM Megamall last Sunday just so that I could watch the film (since it was only screening in Megamall that day). And oh it was so worth it. I can definitely see why it got the Audience Choice in the New Breed category of Cinemalaya.

The film tells the story of Gibson Bonifacio (Dominic Roco), a twenty-year-old guy who has elective mutism due to a traumatic event he witnessed during his childhood. His family, also affected by the event, is a bit dysfunctional, with the dad (Boboy Garovillo) awkwardly trying to be cheerful while the mom (Dawn Zulueta) being cold and distant.

Gibs, as our protagonist is called, seeks escape from this environment by traveling and studying outside the country, or going out on gimiks with his friends in Manila, or when at home, by locking himself in his room to smoke pot or to listen to music on his vinyl collection. He also looks through the world through his camera, capturing scenes of everyday life as if as a shield that lets him stay withdrawn from the world.

After three years of being abroad, he returns home for the holidays with his mother simply greeting him, “you’re late”. Then while out checking out Manila’s underground scene with his best friend, he meets this girl named Enid (Annicka Dolonius) who shares his interest in music. With her, he begins to experience the magic of love, with all of its ups and downs.

I have a special place for poignantly emotional films. While I very much enjoy blockbuster action films, movies that mess with your mind, and comedies, stories that tug at your heart like The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, Hotaro no Haka, and 100 leave an indelible mark in my mind.

And what a mark did Ang Nawawala leave on me. I turned off the radio while driving home after the screening since I felt silence was a more appropriate accompaniment to what I felt when I left the movie theater. I guess I can see quite a bit of myself in Gibson. Like him, I’m still very much an introvert. And while friends who know me can attest that can be quite social and assertive when needed, I still maintain a sort of independence and aloofness, and having the innate need to be alone.

Dominic Roco played Gibson with such earnestness that you can see his emotions playing out on his face and expressive eyes despite staying silent for most of the film. Dawn Zulueta was also very effective as the withdrawn mother. And it is extremely pleasing to see a very emotional movie with so very little melodrama. No shouting and slapping of faces, and no dramatic dialogue carefully designed to be reposted over and over again on Twitter.

One of the film’s main theme is about silence and of things left unsaid. Yet I find it remarkable that all of this is beautifully set against the live songs of the local music scene. I’ve learned that Marie Jamora directed a lot of the music videos of our local artists and the film shows her love of music, something that I appreciated in this film. (And it deserved its Best Original Music Score award.)

Ang Nawawala actually tells a very simple story. But it is in the little silent moments and experiences that one truly finds oneself.

This article is an entry in Eugene Alvin Villar’s blog, vaes9. View the original entry.

OpenStreetMap Philippines: 2011 Year in Review

2012-01-22T21:32:00Z

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2011 was a pretty good year for the OpenStreetMap project in the Philippines. Aside from the usual Mapping Parties, the community has organized or participated in several other events, some of them outside the Philippines. 2011 also saw the release of a more improved and usable OSM Philippine Garmin map, and OSM contributors made 2011 the best year in terms of increase of data in the Philippines (thanks to Bing).

By many respects, 2011 was the most active year for the Philippine OpenStreetMap community. 2012 will have quite a bit of a trouble topping the high bar that the previous year has set, but it’s a challenge that I’m certainly looking forward to. [ :)]

Mapping Parties and Research Papers

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We had four Mapping Parties in 2011. All of them were held in Metro Manila and the the target areas were:

The Scout Area of Quezon City (February 12)
The whole town of Pateros (June 11)
The southwestern portion of Makati (July 23)
The area in and around Greenhills in Mandaluyong and San Juan (December 17)

Of the four, the QC Scout Area and the Greenhills Mapping Parties had the most participants, while the Pateros event had, in my opinion, the most impact in terms of increased coverage. You can check out how the a portion of Pateros was improved in the following visualization.

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Aside from these Mapping Parties, Maning and Rally also attended a mini mapping event organized by Philip Paar, a German who was doing academic research on mapping slum areas. The event took place in mid January 2011 and the target was the Gawad Kalinga Telus Village in Quezon City. Philip visited Manila a couple of times before, mapping three other Gawad Kalinga villages, and for the Telus Village event, Maning and Rally participated to provide a local’s perspective.

Philip has published his research together with his co-researcher . You can check two of the papers they wrote in the following links.

Conferences, Hackdays, and Meetups

On September 17, OpenStreetMap Philippines gave a workshop at Software Freedom Day 2011, which was organized by the Computer Professionals Union. The workshop had around 50 student attendees and we gave them an overview of OpenStreetMap and had them try their hand at editing the data via Potlatch2.

In 2011, Maning started to organize the Philippine chapter of OSGeo, an international group that promotes the use of free and open source GIS software. OSGeo and OpenStreetMap enjoy a close relationship in many countries and there is actually some overlap in members between the two. And so during OSGeo Philippines’ third meeting held on December 3, I gave overview of OSM to the attendees.

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In addition to these local events, Maning became the first ever Filipino (based in the Philippines) to attend State of the Map (SOTM), the annual conference for OpenStreetMap contributors, users, and supporters. In 2011, SOTM was held in Denver, Colorado from September 9 to 11 and Maning fortunately got a travel scholarship which lets him travel and attend the conference for free. Maning gave a short presentation on the state of OSM in the Philippines.

Maning also attended a regional FOSS4G in Tokyo and Osaka in Japan in November. FOSS4G is the OSGeo counterpart of OpenStreetMap’s SOTM, and while Maning wasn’t able to attend the global FOSS4G event in Denver (right after SOTM) he was able to attend the Japan conference where he saw how active the Japanese mapping and GIS communities were. Incidentally, SOTM 2012 will be held in Tokyo.

Finally, several OSM contributors met in Maning’s office on February 18 for the Garmin Hackday. While no actual hacking occurred that day, lots of ideas were discussed and many of them were implemented to create a much improved OSM-PH Garmin map.

A better Garmin map

As mentioned, an improved Garmin map based on OSM data in the Philippines was developed using some of the ideas shared during the Hackday, and was officially released on July 26. (Garmin is a brand of GPS navigation devices that is quite popular in the Philippines and the OSM Philippines community has been providing maps for Garmin devices since the late 2007.)

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Among the improvements include better address search which was made possible because of new features added to mkgmap, the software we use to compile the Garmin map from OSM data. The map also had a fresher style with a lot more types of POIs (points of interest) shown. You can check out all the improvements on Maning’s blog post.

Impressive data growth

The numbers speak for themselves:

Data statistics as of January 3, 2011:

Number of nodes: 1,528,760
Number of ways: 127,544
Number of relations: 645
Number of contributors: 701
Total road length: 59,969 km

Data statistics as of December 28, 2011 (with percentage increase in parentheses):

Number of nodes: 2,778,737 (82%)
Number of ways: 283,621 (122%)
Number of relations: 1,769 (174%)
Number of contributors: 1,238 (77%)
Total road length: 91,461 km (53%)

The growth is quite impressive. All five data points have shown an increase of more than half and some numbers have even more than doubled compared to a year ago!

A large portion of this growth is definitely due to Bing Maps allowing OpenStreetMap to trace from it’s available satellite imagery. We still haven’t exhausted the possibilities of extracting data from Bing so expect further growth in 2012. [ :)]

Image credits: Map by ITO World (CC-BY-SA 2.0). Photos by Maning Sambale, Philip Paar, Harry Wood (CC-BY-SA), Eugene Villar, and an unknown photographer at FOSS4G. Other maps from data by OSM contributors.

This article is an entry in Eugene Alvin Villar’s blog, vaes9. View the original entry.

Mannasoft’s Philippines DigiMap is a Waste of Money

2011-11-01T04:24:00Z

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I was browsing the map section of Bestsellers in Robinsons Galleria in early October and I discovered this CD software named Philippines DigiMap (v2.0.0) produced by a company named Mannasoft Technology Corporation. Being the map geek that I am, I was initially intrigued by this product, which when installed (Windows only, I presume) supposedly lets you browse a digital map of Metro Manila and search for POIs (points of interest). Unfortunately, its 300-peso price turned me off. But the clincher was this notice printed on the back of the packaging:

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Upon installation, Philippines DigiMap may be used for 15 days. To extend use, activation code is required. Please call or email at the contact info below.

Is this for real? Is this software so good that I need to get it activated? I’m not even sure if the activation is free (and I’m too lazy to contact them to find out). Besides, in this age of Google Maps and OpenStreetMap, both of which are free, why would I pay 300 pesos to get a digital map that I likely couldn’t use in a mobile setting, and can’t use for real-time navigation? It’s true that you need an Internet connection to browse Google Maps, but there are tons of offline solutions that are often free. I thought that Periplus’ Metro Manila Atlas was a not worth its price, but Mannasoft’s Philippines DigiMap takes the cake.

Mannasoft actually has a website which seems to contain the same map data: www.directorymanila.net. I browsed their online maps on that site and I was quite unimpressed. They used the KabeetMaps model of only showing a map of each city in Metro Manila one at a time instead of the continuous and seamless map that Google and OSM provides. In addition, I tried the search functionality for their Makati map and I couldn’t get it to work at all. And oh, their street network is wrong in many places and outdated in others.

Well, if there’s one nice thing that I can say, it’s the fact that they provided floor plans of Glorietta so that you can locate interior shops. This is actually a nice and almost unique feature that they could capitalize on. Unfortunately, their Glorietta floor plan is also outdated, they even show the shops in Glorietta 1 and 2 which are long closed and gone.

Oh yeah, here’s the final nail in the coffin. It seems that their GIS and cartography solution is so poor that they couldn’t even make their own overview map of Metro Manila (as seen on the front cover of their packaging). I made that Metro Manila map for Wikipedia back in 2003 and I could definitely recognize the tell-tale shape and colors. See the visualization below to compare. Look especially at the outline of Makati and the northern border of Valenzuela.

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If a company had the gall to steal a map somebody else made without following the generous open license or even providing any attribution, then I think they couldn’t be trusted to provide an accurate and updated map, much less entrust them with 300 pesos of your money.

This article is an entry in Eugene Alvin Villar’s blog, vaes9. View the original entry.

More 3D Buildings in Google Earth

2011-10-22T14:57:05Z

More than a year ago, I blogged about the very detailed 3D buildings in U.P. Diliman that can be explored in Google Earth. And a year before that, Mike Gonzalez shared his top 10 3D Philippine sights in Google Earth. Well, I recently installed Google Earth 6 and decided to check out the current state of the 3D buildings and models in Metro Manila. The verdict? I’m quite impressed!

In the past couple of years, several Google Earth modelers have managed to add tons of 3D building models in Metro Manila, especially in the Makati Central Business District, Bonifacio Global City, and Ortigas Center. While the coverage is far from complete, what’s there is already quite adequate. Going into the details, a lot of the buildings need a lot more improvement, but in terms of showing a bird’s eye view, it’s sufficient enough.

Caveat: some modelers are so enthusiastic, they even provided models of buildings that are still under construction or even under planning! So don’t take these models at face value.

[ Makati CBD]

Shown above is a screenshot of the Makati CBD with Mount Makiling on the horizon. PBCom Tower, currently the country’s tallest building, is quite visible.

[ Bonifacio Global City]

Next up is Bonifacio Global City. Here you can see a complete model of the Trion Towers of which currently only 1 tower is under construction. Visible along the left edge of the screenshot, is a portion of the Buendia-Kalayaan Flyover model that someone helpfully provided.

[ Ortigas Center]

Ortigas Center is looking quite impressive with nice detailed models of SM Megamall and Shangri-La Plaza Mall to complement the skyscrapers. I actually like the detailed model of the transmission tower on top of Strata 2000. [ :)]

And for fun, I tried to recreate a photo of the Makati CBD from the Ayala Avenue–Makati Avenue intersection to see how good the models are. Shown below is the original photo taken by Bernardo Agulo. And below that is the same scene as seen in Google Earth, matched to the best of my abilities. It’s not a perfect match, but it’s quite impressive, don’t you think? [ :-D]

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This article is an entry in Eugene Alvin Villar’s blog, vaes9. View the original entry.

MNL–BKK–TLV–HKG–MNL (Part 1)

2011-08-30T18:18:00Z

So far, the top highlight of 2011 for me was my recent trip to Israel where I attended Wikimania 2011, held in the beautiful seaside city of Haifa. Wikimania is the annual conference for Wikipedians (and Wikimedians) and it is held in different cities every year. Last year it was held in Gdansk, Poland and next year it will be in Washington, D.C. I applied for a scholarship to attend this year’s Wikimania and I was fortunate to be accepted. The scholarship enabled me to go to Israel with practically all-expenses paid. The only thing I needed was pocket money and some transportation fare.

One other good thing was that Filipinos don’t need visas to enter Israel. I believe this is because the Philippines was the only Asian nation to support the creation of the State of Israel back in 1947. Thus, there would be no visas to worry about (which was one thing that torpedoed my chance to visit Amsterdam for free two years ago).

However, I won’t be talking about the conference or Israel for this blog post. What I want to share are my experiences during the flights to and from Israel because they were quite interesting in themselves.

Itinerary and Firsts

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There’s no direct flight between Israel and the Philippines, and there is no single airline that flies between Manila (MNL: Ninoy Aquino International Airport [NAIA]) and Tel Aviv (TLV: Ben Gurion International Airport) even with stopovers. So flying to and from Israel meant that I had to stop somewhere and change airlines along the way.

I had my flights booked via the travel agency contracted by the conference organizers. I was originally given an itinerary via Hong Kong (HKG: Hong Kong International Airport) for both the departure and arrival flights from/to Manila. But because I wasn’t amenable with the departure flight schedule, I requested the friendly travel agent to book me a later flight. She got me a flight flying through Bangkok (BKK: Suvarnabhumi Airport) and I accepted it.

The complete itinerary ended up being the following:

MNL–BKK via Philippine Airlines flight PR 732 (departing at 7:30pm; arriving at 9:50pm; 3:20 flight time)
BKK–TLV via El Al Israel flight LY 082 (departing at 12:10am; arriving at 7:00am; 10:50 flight time)
TLV–HKG via El Al Israel flight LY 075 (departing at 10:00pm; arriving at 1:50pm; 10:50 flight time)
HKG–MNL via Cathay Pacific flight CX 903 (departing at 4:35pm; arriving at 6:40pm; 2:05 flight time)

The decision to fly to Bangkok instead of Hong Kong was a very fortunate one as I will explain later.

Anyway, these flights provided me with a lot of firsts. It was the first time I visited Israel and the Middle East. It was the first time I stepped foot in another Southeast Asian country (though it was only the airport at Bangkok). It was the first time for me to travel solo since my previous international travels were either with family or with co-workers, and the two other Filipino attendees to the conference took different itineraries. This was the first time for me to experience changing airlines as well. A bit surprisingly, it was also the first time for me to fly Philippine Airlines (having flown on local airlines SEAIR and Cebu Pacific before). There are many other firsts, but these are the most significant ones, I think.

Immigration problems

Unexpectedly, I had a bit of a problem with the immigration authorities at NAIA. They had a lot of questions regarding my trip and it seems that being invited to attend a conference in Israel for free was very unusual. They had me go to a special immigration booth to fill up a large embarkation form. I think they wanted to make sure that I wasn’t going to Israel to work since I would need to be registered as an Overseas Filipino Worker for that. I assured them that I am already locally employed but couldn’t provide proof since I left my company ID at home because I thought that I didn’t need it.

Eventually, they accepted my story and allowed me to proceed after I presented to them my invitation letter and my flight e-ticket showing that I would not stay in Israel for long.

In contrast to the immigration in Manila, I had very little problem in Tel Aviv. The immigration officer there just asked me the usual questions and I just presented my invitation letter. He then stamped my passport and allowed me to pass. I found this interesting because before that, I noticed a few Filipinos get directed to a special immigration office. One of them was a Filipina who traveled to Tel Aviv to work as a caregiver. I worried that I would suffer the same fate and get interrogated regarding the purpose of my travel to Israel.

By the way, I initially got disconcerted that the officer stamped my passport giving proof that I stepped foot in Israel. Apparently, if any of the several neighboring Arab countries hostile to Israel saw an Israeli passport stamp, they will refuse to let you enter their country, some permanently. So, the usual procedure to avoid that is to request the officer to stamp a piece of paper that will be inserted into the passport and eventually discarded when you leave Israel. But since my passport itself was stamped, I just have to avoid going to those hostile countries until I renew my passport in 2014—not a challenge since I doubt that I would be visiting Arab Middle East anytime soon.

(Then again, they could simply Google my name, discover this blog post, and deduce that I’ve been to Israel, stamp or no stamp. But it’s no big loss since the only mildly interesting city to visit among those Arab countries is Dubai, and there are plenty of other cities around the world more worthy of visit like Paris, London, and New York.)

The Most Secure Airline in the World

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One thing that I didn’t know before I embarked on my trip was that El Al Israel, the country’s flag carrier, and the airline that I flew into and out of Tel Aviv, has the unenviable distinction of being the most secure airline in the world. Israel is certainly not the most well-loved country in the region and since flights are a favorite target of terrorists (even way before 9/11), flights by El Al are probably the most targeted by terrorists of any airline in the world.

Fortunately, there has only been one successful hijacking of an El Al Israel flight in the past six decades and that was Flight 426 back in 1968. There were several other attempts but they were foiled by Israel and its allies.

Unfortunately, this means that passengers undergo more stringent screening procedures than normal. They don’t seem quite as crazy as the weird procedures employed by TSA for American flights, but they’re no less inconvenient.

First of all, El Al doesn’t trust baggage screening procedures by destination airports. Thus, they do their own baggage screening. During check-in (such as for my departure flight from TLV), they request you to open your check-in luggage so that they can inspect the contents for themselves. For transit luggages where the passenger is not around (such as for my arrival flight to TLV), they force open the luggages even if they’re locked. I was dismayed to find out when I claimed my luggage in Tel Aviv that they had picked all the locks and even destroyed one my combination locks. The contents were also messed up. [ :(]

Secondly, they personally interview each and every one of their passengers (Israelis less so, I think). El Al apparently employs expert profilers to identify suspicious passengers. Their questions also try to make sure that a passenger may not unknowingly bring on board a bomb disguised as a gift given by someone else to the passenger to be carried along the flight. (This line of questioning is probably a result of the Hindawi Affair in 1986.) I must say though that these interviewers were very polite and even explained the purposes of their questions (no doubt as another psychological trick to unnerve would-be terrorists).

Lastly, aside from the interview, the airline screens all passengers and their carry-on luggage as well. They have the passengers go through metal detectors and scan for explosive materials. They also screen the contents of the carry-on luggage.

One other inconvenience that I experienced was when I was already seated in the airplane on the flight to Tel Aviv but before take-off. An El Al staff approached me and asked about my Nokia cellphone. She said that they noticed that I had a Nokia phone charger in my checked-in luggage but that the Nokia phone was not there. I showed her that I had the phone with me and she requested that it be checked in. I was confused until I realized only then that they actually forced opened my luggage and that they would be the one to insert my phone into the bag. As a sign of good faith, I also told them about my Sony Ericsson phone that was with me and whose charger was also inside my checked-in luggage but she told me that it was only the Nokia charger that they had a problem with. I think they worry about remotely-controlled bombs using cellphones. But it all seemed completely arbitrary, especially when nobody took notice of my Nokia phone/charger on the departure flight from Tel Aviv. (But maybe because flights from Israel are less of a security risk than flights to Israel.)

All in all, these security procedures are understandable though quite inconvenient. There was actually a suggestion that you should check in four hours before flying with El Al instead of the usual three. I’ve also heard some similar or even worse stories from other conference attendees flying with El Al such as this Spaniard who was forced to leave his laptop in Madrid. Bummer!

One other aspect of El Al flights that I’d like to share is that their flights are longer than comparable flights to Asia with other airlines (I think). The reason? They have to avoid the airspaces of the aforementioned Arab countries.

During the flight to Tel Aviv, I predicted that the jet would just stay well clear of Iran, which is the only country that is currently openly hostile towards Israel. But I was a bit surprised to see the flight avoid every Arab country when I checked the displayed flight map. The flight from Bangkok passed over central India and then dipped south and flew over the Red Sea. The plane then took the Gulf of Aqaba fork of the Red Sea where Israel has a small coastline (sandwiched between Egypt and Jordan). You can see this on the map below.

[ Map of El Al Israel flights for the BKK–TLV and TLV–HKG routes]

I thus learned that there is actually another practical significance to Israel’s access to the Red Sea. It allows El Al flights to leave its airspace directly into the airspace over the international waters of the Red Sea. What surprised me still was that the flight still avoided Egypt even though it’s the most friendly of Israel’s neighbors. Heck, El Al even has regular flights to Cairo so I wonder why the plane still avoided that country especially since it would mean that the plane skirts close to Saudi Arabia.

For the return flight to Hong Kong, the flight passed via a more northernly route, over Turkey, the Caucasus region, central Asia, and then finally over China.

As I said earlier, it was fortunate that I had a stopover in Bangkok since this let me experience the two different flight paths of El Al to Asia. As a map geek, I find this geopolitical experience very fascinating. [ :-D]

This article is an entry in Eugene Alvin Villar’s blog, vaes9. View the original entry.

The First Wikipedia Kapihan

2011-03-21T08:09:00Z

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A month ago on February 19, Wikimedia Philippines held its first Wikipedia Kapihan at Starbucks 32nd and 7th Bonifacio Global City. The Kapihan (Tagalog for “coffee talk”, approximately) is an unstructured meetup to introduce Wikimedia Philippines and the Wikimedia projects (not just Wikipedia) to similar and like-minded organizations. There have been plenty of Wikipedia-related meetups that have happened since 2007, but most of those have been among people who have contributed to Wikipedia. This was the first time that we had a meetup specifically targeted to people outside the editing community.

For the first Kapihan, we were fortunate to be graced by the presence of people from the Philippine IT Organization, which aims to be a pan-Philippine Information Technology organization. Microphone, a new media outlet that aims to cover IT-related events and groups in the Philippines, also attended and provided coverage (and took the photo above).

Over glasses of coffee and sans-caffeine drinks, we answered questions regarding Wikipedia. As expected, there were questions that revolved around Wikipedia’s reliability. My favorite answer to those questions? “How many times have you seen news outlets get things wrong?” Aside from the fact that other media are not always reliable, one big advantage of Wikipedia is that it aims to provide citations in its articles so that readers can check the sources themselves. Furthermore, Wikipedia is open and the editing process is transparent—readers can go to an article’s talk page and the article’s history to see for themselves how the article has evolved over time. It may be messy but you get the real deal.

Another important question was regarding incentives to contributing. Why would people spend time to edit Wikipedia articles? What’s in it for them? My personal answer to that is that it gives me a satisfying feeling that I am sharing what I know to a worldwide audience. The general answer is that you might as well ask why people volunteer for Habitat for Humanity or Gawad Kalinga. It’s all a part of most people’s innate nature to help make a better world. [ :-)]

An aside, I was also interviewed by Microphone and you can see it on their site. This was the second time I participated in a video interview (the first time happened over 3 years ago). I really don’t like how I sound and look on camera. [ :-p]

Hopefully, last month’s Kapihan will just be the first in a series of meetup events to expand the reach of the Wikimedia projects in the Philippines. Hope you get to join the next one! (And if you’re a true-blue Wikipedian, why don’t you join Wikimedia Philippines and attend our next quarterly meeting this April 2?)

This article is an entry in Eugene Alvin Villar’s blog, vaes9. View the original entry.

2010 Top 10 Movies

2011-02-27T07:10:00Z

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I guess it’s no longer a tradition if you’re going to break it for three years but in the spirit of blogging, I’m going to restart my yearly post of presenting the top 10 movies of the previous year that I’ve seen, just like what I did for 2006, 2005, and 2004. (Also, it’s Oscar night tonight!) As with those earlier posts, I only considered movies that had their screening in Philippine cinemas in 2010 and which I was able to see that same year. 2010 was a pretty decent movie-going year for me and I was able to watch a respectable total of 45 films.

Here’s the list of my top 10 best movies of 2010 (in order and linked to their Wikipedia articles):

1. Inception

2. The Social Network

3. Buried

4. RPG Metanoia

5. How To Train Your Dragon

6. The Road

7. Megamind

8. The Ghost Writer

9. Kick-Ass

10. The American

I’ve already raved about both Inception and RPG Metanoia, so I’ll just make a quick run-down of the rest of the list. As expected, these are all a matter of taste and you are of course quite free to disagree. I will also link to the Plurks (if any) where I microblogged about the movie.

My sisters found The Social Network quite boring, but being the Internet junkie that I am, I find the early history of Facebook (even if fictionalized) very fascinating. The movie is well-made and Jesse Eisenberg’s portrayal of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (2010’s Time Person of the Year) is very compelling. It’s no wonder for me that the movie is an Oscar nominee for both Best Picture and Best Director, and Jesse is a nominee for Best Actor. I’m now waiting for the movie about Google to be made. [ :-)] (Plurk)

Buried has a unique concept. The whole movie showed nothing but actor Ryan Reynolds buried alive in a box for the whole duration of the film. That seems to make for a tedious watch, but believe me that Buried is a really worthy film to see if you want something different. (BTW, the movie’s trailer is a bit misleading.) (Plurk)

Sorry Toy Story fans, but the best foreign animated film for me would be How To Train Your Dragon. I was personally more touched by the relationship between a loser boy and a crippled dragon than I was with Andy and his toys. (Plurk)

The Viggo Mortensen-starring and post-apocalyptic film The Road is a difficult one to watch. But the bleak cinematography and the emotional grip of the plot makes the movie compelling.

Initially, I had a hard time deciding which of the two anti-hero villain animated movies, Despicable Me and Megamind, I liked better. Ultimately, I went for Megamind’s better plot and more redeeming character development over the cuteness of Despicable Me’s Agnes and Minions. [ :-P] (Plurk)

The Ghost Writer is a great political thriller starring Ewan McGregor and Pierce Brosnan and directed by Roman Polanski, who is wanted in the US for sexual abuse charges. The plot is intriguing, the acting is superb, and the spectacular seaside views of Germany (as a stand-in for New England, since Polanski couldn’t film in the US) are breathtaking.

Kick-Ass kicked ass. ’Nuff said.

Among the ten films, I think the spy thriller The American would be the most boring for other people. The film is full of scenes where no one is talking, but the views of rural Italy, and George Clooney’s very restrained acting, more than make up for the huge lack of movement (though there are a few action scenes here and there). (Plurk)

This article is an entry in Eugene Alvin Villar’s blog, vaes9. View the original entry.

Somebody Actually Got a Tattoo of My Phi Logo

2011-01-30T10:22:03Z

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I blogged in 2008 that if ever I would get a permanent tattoo, I would get something like the one pictured above. This is a stylized Greek letter phi which represents the golden ratio. The golden ratio is my favorite number by far and I just love how it is crops up in so many places and how it provides a nice blend of mathematics and art. I love it so much that I made that logo for my amateur QuickBASIC software “company”.

Late last year, Judd commented on my tattoo blog post wanting to know who did that logo. I told him that I’m the designer and Judd mentioned that somebody actually went and got a tattoo of my phi logo.

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I’m quite flattered that someone thinks that my phi logo is good enough to be immortalized as a tattoo design. Do you think that I should charge him royalties? [ :-P]

This article is an entry in Eugene Alvin Villar’s blog, vaes9. View the original entry.