Toughest Place to be: Philippines

BBC just recently featured a documentary about Philippines being the toughest place to drive a bus ( or should I say "any vehicle"). It shows Josh West, a seasoned London bus driver, where, with the help of pinoy driver Mang Rogelio Castro accepted the challenge of braving the chaotic streets of Manila driving a Jeepney. An inspiring story of two people with similar jobs but with different fate.

Here are the videos:

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part 2/6

part 3/6

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part 5/6

part 6/6

This proves the underlying pandemic poverty problem of  the general Filipinos. One could see President Noynoy's stickers all over Mang Rogelio's jeepney and it would seem different President and Political stickers or logos have been poked out on his jeepney but one thing remains the same - the reality that 24 hours are not enough of Mang Rogelio's hardwork to bring enough and descent food unto his family's table. On a positive note, you can see a genuine heart and a viral optimism in Mang Rogelio despite all the hardships.

Survey: WoW versus Kay Ganda

"Wow Philippines" has been the country's slogan for quite a long time now and many agrees that the slogan is better enough to compete alongside neighboring Asian countries like "Malaysia: Truly Asia", "Incredible India", "Amazing Thailand", "Uniquely SIngapore" and so on. With the new "Pilipinas Kay Ganda" branding by the Philippine Tourism lead by Secretary Alberto Lim, many of us are wondering why do we need to change our country's slogan. Why fix it when it is not broken?
According to the media interviews of Sec. Lim, the new slogan appeals to the foreigners, specifically to Americans and Koreans (I think they're the top foreign visitors of our country) and as long as DOT receives positive feedbacks from the foreign visitors, the new slogan will remain (or maybe until Campaigns & Grey comes up with a better slogan).

For this matter, I wanted to ask your opinions, what do you think of these two slogans and which one appeals most to you? Please feel free to leave a comment.

1) WoW Philippines

2) Pilipinas Kay Ganda

Presenting the Multi-Million Project: Pilipinas Kay Ganda

Just one day after the Philippine Department of Tourism (DOT) presented the new tourism slogan and logo, they have received public backlash and scrutiny amongst media members, critics, bloggers and concerned Filipino citizens around the world. Many are saying that the new tourism branding is boring, unattractive and not well-researched considering this is a multi-million project (online report says P200 million budget is alloted to this project).

The government has contracted the advertising company Campaigns & Grey to do the branding and research for the new DOT logo, and their research brought them to as far as Poland to get their inspiration.

The slogan also suggests that the President's administration is "too Kapamilya", aside from the fact that all Filipinos know that the President's sister Kris Aquino works for the Kapamilya network, the new DOT slogan "PIlipinas Kay Ganda" is obvously a close clone to that of a Kapamilya morning show called "Umagang Kay Ganda".

It's not surprising that one day,  because of this four-month long well researched and multi-million pesos project, we'll see the new face of Department of Tourism greeting tourists and balikbayans at the Airport.