You may have noticed that there haven’t been any new projects or new pictures in the website, or even new blog posts. So let me start off with a greeting: Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Chinese New Year, Happy Birthday and all of those nice stuff! I’d also like to thank a certain special someone who gave me this T-Shirt and the message is just perfect for this new year where we get to start all over again.
Migratory Birds
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Before Valentine’s Day, around February 9, I joined Greenpeace Philippines in of their day missions. It was at the Las Pinas-Paranaquue Critical Habitat and Ecotourism Area also known as LPPCHEA. It was somewhere near the Coastal Road area. A lot of you who live down South have probably passed that area several times on your way to work. What you probably didn’t know that LPPCHEA is one of the migratory routes of several birds including several endangered species of birds, including the Chinese Egret, and the Greenshank, and the Black-Winged Stilt. It’s a 175 hectares and 83 species of birds fly through that area and it’s also home to 9 endemic species of mangroves so it’s quite an important piece of land. Unfortunately, several developers are trying to reclaim that area and turn it into a mall or something. So that sucks because you can’t just tell birds to change their migratory paths and it’ll take 30 years for birds to learn to adapt and figure out a new migratory route. One of the reasons we went there with Greenpeace is to create awareness. And there were several people, several bloggers, photographers and even GMA News. And it’s really important for people to know that there is such a place here just near Metro Manila, and we need to protect it from businessmen who just want to make a quick profit. The following excerpt from Proclamation 1412-A is supposed to protect the area.
Ensure existing mangrove, mudflats and ecosystems are preserved and/or not built over, and are kept in a condition that will support natural growth of indigenous and or naturally occurring wetland plants critical to the survival of wildlife and natural ecological functions.
But as we all know in this country, money can sometimes overrule the law.
Here’s the segment from GMA 24-Oras:
Tara Let’s Go Asia
From briefcase to backpack
On the lighter side of things, coming up this March 22, we have a new project launch. I’m going to start working with Tara Let’s Go Asia. It’s inspired by Meet Plan Go which is a project based in the United States. Meet Plan Go is a project that encourages people to add travel as part of their career advancement. Tara Let’s Go is a little bit different since it focuses more on the short-term travelers, the weekend warrior-type people. Now, what’s gonna be exciting is we’re gonna be coming out with a resource-book, like a knowledge-base for travelers. On March 22, that’s gonna be a Friday 6pm somewhere at Eton Centris. We’re gonna be talking about Travel & Money, or how travelers make or save money, save their income in order for them to travel in order to live your aloha while enjoying the vacation. That’s gonna be a cool topic. It’s gonna be about the financial preparation aspect of traveling. I’m pretty excited to be working with the Tara Let’s Go Asia team as one of their co-founders. We’re really excited to be launching this project here in the Philippines. It’s not just gonna be for the Philippines, it’s for Asian travelers as well. Right now we’re organizing all of the speakers, all of the keynote speakers that’s gonna be speaking there. Again, its’ gonna be March 22, Friday at 6pm-10pm in the evening at Eton Centris, so I’ll see you all there.
Tickets come with drinks, materials, and pre-sell to the Tara Let’s Go Asia Traveler’s resource book.
Project Phoenix – A New Living Under Imagination photo project
Stay tuned, we’ll tell you more details soon as we progress with this project.
Motorbike Travel
Honda CBR 150R 2010
Oh, and one more thing. I bought a bike! 😀 It’s a Honda CBR 150 2010 model. It’s a really cool bike. I also consider getting a customized license plate number. Personal number plates make the vehicle more recognizable, making it much easier to locate. I plan to do a lot of traveling with it for this year. Right now I’m still gaining experience, just riding the bike, racking up the miles, because I’ve been in two accidents already. I have a few injuries here and there, scuff marks on the knees and the fingers. So, always ride with safety gear on! One of the possibilities that’s gonna happen is that I’m gonna be going on city roadshows for Tara Let’s Go Asia.
Stay tuned!
