El Rey Del Knockout and Reimagined Tinikling

As we await another Pacquiao fight on November 22, allow us to regale you with the little-known story of a Spanish-Filipino boxer who was the world welterweight champ in the 1920s-1930s and whose winning record was only broken by Manny Pacquiao in 2013.

Luis Logan, “El Rey del Knockout,” was that rare breed of boxer who didn't have to fight his way out of poverty. He was heir to an international perfume business; the world-famous "Tabu" was the family product. That Luis chose to be a professional pugilist makes for a riveting story that our regular writer Myles A. Garcia painstakingly unearthed. "Before Elorde and Pacquiao, There was Luis Logan" indeed.

Another fascinating historical piece this week is Penelope V. Flores' "Gemelli Carreri, An Italian in Manila 1696," about the first travel writer who wrote about his one-month visit to Las Islas Filipinas and introduced the islands to the world.

Back to the present, Daniel Griffith, a Filipino American, writes about his three-month eye-opening, life-changing immersion in the Philippines and poses a challenge to his co-millennials to learn more about their parents' homeland. Daniel is part of the Kaya Collaborative, which coordinates immersion trips.

A tribute to the late Fernando "Jerry" Barican, well-known youth leader, businessman and once presidential spokesman, comes from his bosom friend, Nelson Navarro, who witnessed the ups and downs of Jerry's life. 

My blog is about the process of whittling down one’s life to the bare essentials: Rightsizing.

For our Videos of the Week, we bring you three amusing ways the national folk dance, the Tinikling, has evolved.

Spot a Filipino and Eat

We'd like Positively Filipino to be the bridge that connects Filipinos wherever they are in the world. Thus, we have started a series that we hope will be a regular feature, PINOYSPOTTING, where we publish photos of chance encounters of the Pinoy kind. When you're traveling and meet a Filipino or Filipinos by chance or by design, take a picture and send it to us, captioned with your names, where the encounter happened and when.

Send to submissions@positivelyfilipino.com. 

If you're visiting Seattle's Pike Place Market, be sure to find your way to Oriental Mart, a sari-sari store and kitchenette owned and operated by an enterprising Filipino family for 44 years. In “The Smart Women of Oriental Mart," first-time contributor Gia Mendoza celebrates the entrepreneurial and people skills of the women of the Apostol family who have mastered the art of feeding tourists in that most holy of Seattle's tourist havens.

Over at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Pasig-born Eduardo A. Angeles is associate administrator of airports, a job that allows him to oversee 3,000 airports in the U.S. and manage a $3.5 billion budget for federal airport grants, among other heavy-responsibility functions. Quite a feat for a single mother’s son, who went on to become a hotshot lawyer, Anthony Maddela reports in "Mr. Angeles Goes to Washington."

Our food writer Elizabeth Ann B. Quirino focuses on Yasmin Newman, a Filipino Australian food journalist and author of 7000 Islands, the first Filipino cookbook that did well in the Australian market. Read “She Came, She Ate, She Wrote a Cookbook” and marvel at how Filipino food has made inroads in various countries.

My blog this week is about the "Dirty Pleasures" we savored in our youth.

In Video of the Week, we look back at the Red Bull wakeskating stunt at the Banaue rice terraces, which drew both praise from some bloggers and criticisms from conservationists.

Happy Autumn!

Scandal and Good Deeds

When regular contributor Myles A. Garcia, a history buff, caught a whiff of the scandal from Down Under involving one of the biggest family fortunes in Australia, he immediately drew on his Internet sleuthing skills and trained his sights on the Filipina that was in the midst of it all. "How To Marry A Millionaire Aussie/Pinoy Style" dishes on the legal battle that had all the elements of a sordid telenovela, and includes a list of online information sources for those who want more of the story.

In New York in the meantime, the musicale "Here Lies Love" which focuses on Imelda Marcos, is creating waves and has branched out to London and will soon tour major American cities. Tricia J. Capistrano writes about the long-dormant emotions that the show resurrected for her.

Remember Carl and Clarence Aguirre, the conjoined twins from Negros Occidental who were successfully separated in 2004? It took more than a village to bring them to New York for their operation, and first-time contributor Carmen Sarmiento tells us the story of the men and women who worked together to make their journey possible. Read "The Aguirre Twins -- A Back Story Paid Forward."

In this week's blog, I write about growing up in UP, in "Childhood Reveries."

For "Video of the Week," pop singer Gary Valenciano surprises balikbayans on a flight home.

Hope your autumn is as colorful as the changing leaves.