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We need people who will actively look for and write about breakthrough business ideas, the people behind those ideas, and other related events in the region. Applicants must have a knack for spotting compelling stories, the passion to actively pursue them, and above average writing skills to write about them.

See your work appear in future issues of Entrepreneur Philippines, and receive compensation for it, too. We are looking for contributors from the following areas: La Union, Baguio, Cavite/Batangas, Laguna/Quezon and Bicol in Luzon; Cebu, Negros Occidental/Bacolod/Iloilo, Negros Oriental/Dumaguete in the Visayas; and Davao/General Santos, Zamboanga in Mindanao.

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The past two weeks have been heavy after having 15 to 20 photo shoots per week. About five to ten per week are the norm, but this issue’s cover story is hell on earth. It would’ve been bearable if they were all in the studio, but all the subjects needed to be shot in malls. Name any mall in the metro and I’ve probably visited it, twice.

Spending 14 hours in a mall isn’t as good as it sounds. Permits are hard to acquire, mall security start to poke through our stuff, and once we whip out our lights, reflectors, and make-up chair, the people start to crowd and it’s nearly impossible to get the shot you want. Their reactions range from the observant, “Uy, may shooting! (Hey, there’s a shooting!)” to the interrogative, “Saang channel lalabas ‘yan? (On which channel is that gonna come out?)” I can’t understand the difficulty in differentiating a DSLR camera from a video camera.

So while the subject goes through hair and make-up, the photographer and I take some test shots to see how the light bounces and if they’re placed in the right place. I act as the stand-in doing whatever we want the real subject to do when it’s his or her turn. And once in a while, especially when we’re all really tired and hungry, we go crazy

Inspired by the movie Up. Walter’s idea, not mine.

Inspired by not eating lunch yet. Obviously, the subject didn’t do this.

I’m still trying to decide which of the many outtakes I have will be my wallpaper in my office computer.

PHOTO CREDITS
Walter Villa

A month into it, I realize I have yet to properly blog about work.

As the editorial assistant of Entrepreneur Philippines, the country’s leading monthly business magazine for small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs) and the entrepreneurs who run them, my tasks include managing appointments for subjects, models, photographers, and stylists; handling photo shoots, arranging vehicle requests, money and logistics for shoots and events, coordinating with contributors and collation of their material, and other responsibilities that relate to the word “editorial” and “assistant”. For someone who finds joy in arranging books according to size, the job is gratifying. But for someone who needs to always be in control, the job is challenging. Find the euphemism in that last sentence.

While I am bound by my contract which I so willingly signed, to not divulge anything confidential that may put the magazine and the company in editorial danger, I can still talk about it without saying stuff like the Summit Media office has an indoor swimming pool, techno club, and a perpetually open bar. They don’t. I wish they did because with the amount of stress in our floor alone, a bottle of tonic just won’t do.

At any given time, the editorial team is doing three issues. As it is August, the September issue is done, the October issue’s nearing completion, and the November and December issues are taking shape. The whole process from brainstorming to seeing the actual magazine in stands is fascinating to watch as they are stressful to do. I can only talk and write about stuff that has been published. That means that the events of the past four weeks will only reach the public sphere of the internet after two months. I can’t wait to tell you about this thing that happened to me last week two months from now. Remind me.

While in the middle of a shoot earlier this week, the photographer gave me three months before I quit. With 15 to 20 shoots scheduled in one week, I can understand how he’d come to the conclusion that this fresh graduate so used to the comfortable lifestyle and security of 16 years of education would crack under pressure. But in the end, there is one thing we all keep in mind: the freebies.

In the late seventies, then first lady Imelda Marcos, with support from her husband, then President Ferdinand Marcos, launched the Nutribun Feeding Program. It was a high-budget feeding program for all public school students in the country who were suffering from malnutrition due to poverty. Basically, the Nutribun was a vitamin enriched pandesal. They would give out these power packed buns to the school children in hopes of a healthier future. Suddenly, the program was stopped and never again spoke of. What happened to the Nutribun?

Conspiracy theorists say the reason why the Nutribun Feeding Program was terminated was because they were feeding more than what was agreed upon to the kids. It turns out that the power-packed pandesals contained more than just flour, wheat, MSG, and vitamins. It contained estrogen as well. Estrogen, for those who have gone through Biology, is the steroid compound that functions as the primary female sex hormone. While estrogen is present in both men and women, they are found in women in significantly higher quantities. They promote the development of female secondary sexual characteristics, such as breasts, and are also involved in the thickening of the endometrium and other aspects of regulating the menstrual cycle.

Now, there’s nothing bad about estrogen. It’s what makes women women. However, one must remember that a majority of the public school students who were ingesting the Nutribun were also young boys. It turns out Imelda’s little nutrition experiment was a population regulator as well. When men take in estrogen, thus increasing their estrogen levels beyond that of their testosterone’s, they too develop female characteristics, more prominent than that of their male’s. In a word, the children were slowly turning gay. The supposed theory: When these now gay boys grow up and become gay men, they will not engage in sexual intercourse with females–only with men–therefore reducing the booming birthrate and slowing down the Philippine’s population growth. We can only assume that some years later, the once little boys, who were little boys no more, came “out” into society with less of something they should have, or more of something they shouldn’t have, with a whole new perspective on life. If they were the least bit healthy, I have no idea, but probably not.

Then in 2005, the Nutribun made a comeback. While scanning the front page of Philippine Daily Inquirer, I just had to laugh when I saw, “Gov’t to feed 7.5M pupils with NutriVEN.’ Dubbed as “the most extensive mass feeding program in Philippine history,” it’s the Nutribun reincarnated. However, instead of a vitamin-enriched pandesal they’re giving vitamin-enriched noodles, hence the acronym, VEN. So aside from flour and other secret ingredients that the public school children will be ingesting, the students will also be smothered in MSG (Monosodium Glutamate) for which instant noodles are known. These chemicals disguised in the form of powders, sweeteners, and flavorings then induce diseases in the uninary and digestive system that may be life-threatening in the long run. With a budget of Php 1.5 billion, the government believes that it will put an end to the country’s problem of malnutrition and make the school a place where hunger for knowledge and food are both satisfied. Nicely put.

And now, nearly forty years after the first buns were launched, the Nutribun has been reincarnated into Nutripan; -pan meaning pandesal. With the Inquirer’s headline saying “‘Nutripan’ now sold in Marikina schools”, the third coming of the buns has zeroed in on several public elementary schools in Marikina City. According to the report, the project “aims to establish bakeries on school campuses that mainly produce pandesal fortified with iron and Vitamin A. The objective is to provide proper nutrition to students at a lesser cost.”

I hope they’re whole wheat.

My life has been a poor attempt/To imitate the man/I’m just a living legacy/To the leader of the band

Dr. Onofre “Pagsi” Pagsanghan, Cory Aquino, Fr. Catalino Arevalo, SJ.