Wasted weekend.

After what seems to be a long week of waking up very early and going home late, I finally have the time to indulge myself to longer hours in bed. But no.

Tama ba naman na itaon ng Manila Water ang pagbubutas ng kalye sa tapat ng bintana ko sa Sabado ng pahinga ko??? Hanggang sa pag-uwi ko sa gabi umaandar 'yung mga malalaki nilang makina na maingay at hirap pa rin akong makatulog. Bwiset.

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So I've been to the recently concluded Creative Industry Forum. Nico's urging me to write all my ranting over the phone here in this blog, but I still don't know where to begin. I'll probably tell you guys about the event in a later post.

It seems have left out a lot of details from what happened to me this week, too, because I was too preoccupied to write about anything.

Maybe I should backtrack a bit. Okay. Here goes:

Monday (Sep 05): Food fest at the house-- Chuy's classmates came over, and so did Nico. He brought us cake.

Tuesday (Sep 06): NGO rounds-- On top of phone call follow-ups with different agencies, I had three meetings with different NGOs on InK and personal business (raket, actually hehe). Haggard.

Wednesday (Sep 07): Day 1 of the Creative Industry Forum (CIF), an initiative of the NCCA, CCP, Department of Trade and Industry and the British Council. The event opened with a performance by Ballet Philippines. I slept through some of the speeches. Ang aga kasi eh! Aside from local speakers from various groups, there were British, Hongkong, and Singapore Nationals who presented their own local case studies/models on the Creative Industries and how they have helped in the improvement of the Gross Development Product (GDP) and the local economy. The forum basically was a wake up call for the Philippines to recognize the Creative Industry as a major contributor to our own GDP. Mejo bigatin ang issue na ito.

Thursday (Sep 08): Day 2 of the CIF. I posted something about this in a previous entry. Speakers for the day were Emily Abrera, Victorino Manalo from the Met Museum, Arnedo Lucas of Roadrunner, someone from the Intellectual Property Office and the Undersecretary of the DTI. The topics were more interesting, kept me pretty much awake this time. In the afternoon we were divided into different areas (Architecture, Crafts, Design and Visual Arts; Literature and Publishing; Film, Broadcast Arts and New Media; Performing Arts; and, Cultural Heritage and Cultural Activities). My group (Architecture, Crafts, Design and Visual Arts) was further divided into three subgroups. We did a SWOT analysis of the state of Visual Arts in the Philippines. It was a depressing and infuriating discussion, but I kept my optimism level above zero. After the prolonged discussion, we went to the British Ambassador's house which I already talked about in the previous entry.

Friday (Sep 09): Day 3 of the CIF. There were more talks. I absolutely liked new NCCA Chair Ambeth Ocampo's speech! I requested a transcription from the CCP Marketing AVP but I was informed that they weren't given a copy. (I'll post it here as soon as I have it.) After lunch the moderators for the different areas of concentration presented the subgroup discussions to the Plenary. I think this three-day forum will bear more results than the NCCA Cultural Summit I attended earlier this year which was just full of blah.

I met up with Nico after the Forum. We had dinner at Chef D'Angelo at Galleria (we wanted to eat at Mario's Kitchen but it had closed down recently I think), then struggled to keep awake in the cinema.

Brothers Grimm was good, I think. Apologies, though-- I was too sleepy to take it all in that night so I couldn't really form a more sensible opinion of it. Nico slept through probably more than 80% of the movie. The hectic week simply caught up with us.

Saturday (Sep 10): I woke up late. So late, in fact, that I was an hour and a half late for the I.n.K. meeting. There was a pretty long discussion on internal issues, so the meeting went longer than usual. Hung out at Nico's house afterwards, and spent a good half hour on the treadmill. Had <3 to <3 talk with Nico in the car. Ü I went home with my wild horses artwork which came from its short run at the CCP last month.

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I think that pretty much brings us up to date. I'm feeling useless at the moment, silently panicking amid threatening deadlines. Good luck to me. :-P