Ambitions

Two public servants -- one on the ascendant, the other under siege. This week we cover both sides of the Pacific with ace journalist Marites Danguilan Vitug reporting on "Jojo Binay's Rough Ride" in Manila and Los Angeles-based feature writer Anthony Maddela writing about Mayor Mark Pulido, the current mayor of Cerritos, California  as the "One to Watch." The mayor claims no higher ambitions at the moment while the vice president is rarin' to go for the highest office in the land. What does the future hold for each of them? Let's keep watching.

As the holiday frenzy and balikbayan season begin in our homeland, it's good to know about serene, calming places tucked in remote corners of the archipelago where one can escape for some R&R. One such place is Bantayan Island in Cebu, and writer Excel Dyquiangco takes us there in "Bantayan Island, The Laid-Back Side of Cebu."

Meanwhile, enjoy reading again Penelope V. Flores' "Andres Bonifacio: The Other National Hero," whose 151st birth anniversary is celebrated nationwide in the Philippines on November 30.

And for our video of the week, Fil-Am sensation Bruno Mars thrills us with his latest, "Uptown Funk!"

My blog this week: The End of Her World.

For our US readers, Happy Thanksgiving!

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!