Someone landed on my website by searching for “why english necessary for filipino student”. I’ll let pictures paint the thousand words I need to explain why. (By the way, “Fugly Filipino English” is the result of that search.)

No Parking: Drainage Under CONSTRUCTED

You can use new bill and old bill. Please don’t use very old, wrinkled and torn bill. If you do, you may lose your bill and you can’t return your bill.

Beware of Falling DIBRES

Now, if you don’t understand why these photos show how problematic English usage is in this country, then clearly there IS a need for Filipino students to take English subjects.

Until the time comes when Mandarin is chosen as the new language for international business, English is still the language we Filipinos communicate with to the rest of the world. We might as well get good at it.

Tags: English language, Philippines

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Fitness First Group Exercise held our first quarterly workshop of the year (we have two) at Fitness First Megamall last Saturday. It’s my third quarterly since I began instructing back in second quarter 2007. While I’ve had to cut back on participating in master classes of other programs (I used to attend BODYCOMBAT), that doesn’t mean I was less excited about the whole thing. It just means that instructing eight classes a week takes its toll on my body and I didn’t want to push myself too hard. I just wanted to kick around with my fellow instructors and experience the upcoming releases as a participant.

BODYBALANCE is once again innovating, and while I don’t want to go too much into detail, we have a lot of emphasis on spinal mobility and moving with the breath. The mat’s also horizontal for the entire class, so at least for this release no more messy mat transitions and people can simply focus on body part, direction, and intensity. Presenters Ben Tang, Jacqueline Wong, and our very own Peewee Sanchez led the BODYBALANCE team through the class, and though we’ve all been teaching for a year or more, we still felt strongly challenged. Watch out! Ü

BODYJAM instructors: aren’t we stylin’?

The weekend’s highlight was, however, the BODYJAM master class. Jam is one of our flagship programs at Fitness First and it’s eye-catching, so instead of the class being held inside the club, we Jammers were herded into a cordoned-off space at the Megamall Central Atrium.

Basically, it was a massive demo for Fitness First, with over 50 instructors seeing release 45 for the first time. Presented by Clark Amaba and Tania Sibon, the musical and dance genres in this release are as varied as the styles of clothing we all wore to class. (That’s me in the front row, by the way.) It felt like a massive dance party all throughout, and that Butterfly Jump is going to torture me all through our practice sessions leading up to the launches in July.

We all returned to the club, and some of us were signed up to do BODYVIVE. It’s a very new program from Les Mills and Fitness First Philippines is projected to launch it sometime in the last quarter of the year, so we got a taste of it. Combining cardio fitness, resistance training (with ball and band), and groovy retro music, it’s a light and fun workout. But after Balance and Jam, it left me pretty much knackered.

Now comes the hard part — learning the choreography!

To learn more about BODYJAM and BODYBALANCE, check out the official Les Mills website.

Tags: Fitness First Philippines, Les Mills, Group Exercise, BODYJAM, BODYBALANCE

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These days, dancing is a major part of my life, and in the absence of any assignments from LAC, it is my life. But how far back do we go, dancing and I?

My first formal training in dance came one summer at the Halili-Cruz School of Ballet in Quezon City. I was five years old and my mom enrolled me in ballet classes to rid me of my pigeon toes and general lack of body awareness. She succeeded on the first count, but I continued to be awkward and gangly through my teens. (Maybe if I’d been able to continue with ballet, I might still be able to touch my feet to the top of my head — that was my favorite floor exercise in ballet school.) Due to finances, I didn’t continue with ballet.

I always participated in school dance numbers, but I felt like I was too old to get better at dance even though I desperately wanted to. Still, watching tapes of Flashdance and Footloose inspired me to go leaping through our bungalow back in Paranaque doing pirouettes and grand jetes. (It’s also why I have a weak left ankle because I sprained it on a bad landing.)

Interesting how similar their poster art is.

When I entered college, people were raving about the Street Dance and Social Dance P.E. classes, which were notoriously hard to get enrolled in due to lack of slots. I never got into the Street Dance classes, but one summer I took up Social Dance and learned four dance styles — cha-cha, waltz, tango, and swing. Unfortunately for me, my partner didn’t know how to lead so I never learned how to follow. It was I who would remember the choreography and walk us through it.

P.E. was only required for four semesters in college, so I got increasingly less physical activity and ate more and more junk food. By the time I was in my last year something had to be done about my weight. My mom discovered that Music One was selling MTV The Grind Workouts, so she snapped up a copy of the first of the series, and we bought the next three as well. I simply followed along, dancing along with (not-really-a-dancer) host Eric Nies through oldskool hip-hop, Latin-flavored cardio, and whatever else the screen presented. Yes, laugh all you want if you thought the choreography wasn’t all that, but having actual choreography to dance was preferable to endless squats in a Buns of Steel video. It didn’t feel like work. And at least it was more up-to-date than ballroom dancing!

Then, of course, I saw Honey on video. I absolutely loved the movie, even though critics and dance aficionados hated it. It reminded me of Flashdance, of my old yearning to dance better. Opportunities presented themselves slowly, but I took them — from attending freestyle hip-hop, BodyJam, and Nike Rockstar classes, to competing, to training with the Stylettos, who helped me sharpen my technique and showed me even more how to dance with emotion and soul.

I’m glad I get to teach BodyJam classes every day, and I’m working hard to get better. I may not have the technique of someone who’s been dancing since Day 1, but I think I’ve got the heart of one.

Tags: Dance

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