Philippines Expat and Travel Blog May Archive

In the seminar, I saw hundreds of commercials banned from being noted as racist, sexually oriented, child prostitution among with others. There were commercials from Europe that were banned because they use disturbing characters and call it a Kids Show. There are some from Australia that shows gory executions while promoting anti-terrorism against Afghanistan. In Great Britain, there is a commercial showing a baby drinking beer right after it was born. But what caught my attention was the same denominator most of these countries have in their banned advertisements, its them being racist.

Particularly, most of the banned "racist" advertisements are all pointing to Japan. They were either bashing Japan for killing whales, for killing millions during the World War II and for raping millions of Chinese, Koreans and Filipinos and turned them to what they call comfort women. However, these ads were downed to support anti racial movements against Japan.

I noticed an specific commercial from Australia where a Japanese is eating in a restaurant and yelled at the staffs with "The whale experienced!". With that he meant of giving him the best food and treatment. But the staffs did what really whales experienced in the hands of the Japanese. They shoot him with a harpoon on the chest and electrocuted him. They literally gave him the "whale experience". It was kind of morbid but it really shows how Australians hate the whaling culture of the Japanese. The commercial is dubbed as "Its Payback Time." There were 33 commercials from different countries that were condemning the Japanese for different bad doings. Next in number are the Chinese for their efforts of keeping the Olympic in good way and also because of their fight with Tibet. Next are the Americans for different doings as well.

There will be an open-to-the-public version of the seminar this Saturday, starting at 9am. Only 18+ and above are allowed and there is a limit of 200 persons so come early if you want to watch those banned advertisements.

The Hot Air Balloon Fiesta is one of the most awaited event in the country. This is definitely one of the most colorful event next to the Pahiyas Festival of Quezon province.

The Hot Air Balloon Fiesta is held in different locations every year. Last year it held in Clark Field, Pampanga. Before that, it was held in Cebu City. This year, the lucky venue was Tagaytay City.

If you come to think of it, Tagaytay is very unlikely to be the venue because there is no big flat area in Tagaytay. All it has is its mountainous planes. However, the organizers said that they only need a small area for the event to be completed. What they did was they occupied the long Tagaytay-Silang crossing and half of the Aguinaldo Highway as the runway and set up area for the balloons.

It was fun seeing the balloons lifting from the ground to the air. The event was participated by the country's biggest companies and even foreign participants also joined the event. Toyota Philippines is the proud presenter of this year's Hot Air Balloon Fiesta.

Companies who participated includes Nestle's Nescafe, McDonald's, Pfizer, Honda Philippines, Mitsubishi Philippines, The North Face, and Bear Brand milk. The countries who also participated includes the Western Australian delegation, Victoria Australia delegates, Dutch Delegation, Singaporean delegation, American delegation and the Chinese delegation.

The balloons finish and landed in the fields of neighbor town Lemery, Batangas. All in all, the event was a huge success although this years participants were not even half of last year's. Nevertheless, the event prove that the country can host an international event where Filipinos can be proud of.