Two weeks ago my friend Liz Lanuzo from ProjectVanity.com invited me and a host of other bloggers to “Vanity, Vanity: A Vanity Fair” at SM North EDSA Sky Dome. It was the third day of the event, which was supported by several major beauty and health brands.

Face Shop and Body Shop offering makeovers

I’m not really a beauty and fashion blogger although I do appreciate good grooming. (It’s why I’m the Kikay Runner.) It was a bit intimidating to be among these stylish bloggers; coming over on the MRT I noticed one girl who was wearing something very LookBook-ish, and true enough she was also at the event!

We had a little game of Blogger Scrabble, where we were separated into two groups, all wearing two letters from the words “BLOGGER” and “I AM VAIN”. After a slow start, my group won and we took home bottles of acai berry juice! I’ve heard good things about the vitamin and nutrient content from this juice, so we shall see if it really works. I’ve been feeling a bit run down lately…

Liz also gave a talk about the Top Ten Tips to Level Up Your Beauty and Fashion Blog. Much of it was common sense, realy, but she presented them in such a way that it would be easy to remember and apply to each blog post made. They’re also actually good tips to apply to any kind of niche blog. Ü

At the end of the afternoon, the winner of the door prize was announced. Each of us bloggers had been asked to write down answers to two questions: “How vain are you?” and “When are you at your most beautiful?” So guess which question I won the prize for. I don’t remember exactly what I wrote, but it went something like this:

“I am so vain that everything I do comes from concern about my appearance. I started working out because I was concerned about gaining weight; now I’m a group exercise instructor. I started running because I wanted to tone my legs; now I’m a host for a television show about running. I started putting on make-up because I didn’t want to look shabby; now I’m invited to events such as this. Yes, I am that vain.”

For that honest answer about my vanity, I won a pot of Mosbeau underarm and inner thigh whitening cream.

My mom was happy to receive this from me.

That was on top of all the other loot bloggers received. I had to bring all these bags onto a crowded MRT, and there was just so much stuff that I could bless my friends with (sometimes I don’t get around to using stuff I’m given). Definitely a well-supported event.

SeriAsia Ganoderma Moisturizer

Clockwise L-R: NaRaYa bag and pouch, SkinFood whitening gift pack, Acai Berry, NuDerm Supreme White Soap, Dermclinic pen

Thanks so much for inviting me, Liz! I feel a yearning for a make-up post coming up soon… (Or maybe, on my friend’s blog Bless My Bag. *wink*)

Over the last four years I’ve written again and again about BODYJAM, a pre-choreographed dance party workout I teach at a local gym. In the years since I’ve become an instructor of the program, I’ve written about it less and less, simply because as an employee of the gym I don’t want to let too much of the mystique out of the bag (and because any occasional whining about work conditions might get me called to “the principal’s office”).

Don’t get me wrong, I love my job, which is teaching BODYJAM. Last week, I had one more reason to love my job more, and that reason’s name is Gandalf Archer.

otherwise known as “G”

No, this is not Gandalf from Lord of the Rings (although I think he’s just as cool =p). G is the program director, choreographer, and worldwide face of BODYJAM. He’s based in Auckland, New Zealand, and travels every quarter to take the experience of BODYJAM to instructors around the world.

This month, on his way home from those travels, he dropped by Manila. He’d been hearing a lot about how passionate we are about the program, and how Filipinos love to dance. So, last Monday night we BODYJAM instructors had a little meet-and-greet with him.

We usually get choreography for BODYJAM through DVD, and many of us had only seen him on our TV screens. So meeting him in the flesh was a completely different experience. My mind is still in denial, actually. It all feels like I was watching it on TV.

OMG. OMG! *hyperventilates*

I had my copy of BODYJAM 43 (my training release) signed by him. It was strange because I was starstruck up until I walked up to him and started talking to him. And then something switched on in my brain and I was just chatty all of a sudden. I was with a fellow instructor, Ryan, who had been having posters autographed for the past few minutes.

The conversation went something like this:

Me: Hi. Sorry to bother you…
G: Oh, it’s not a bother.
Me: (holding my hand out) I’m Noelle, and I think you know Ryan. He’s back with another poster, I think he’s gone into business selling them…
Ryan: (laughs)
G: Well, it’s going to be a short-lived business, like, it’ll be over in five minutes.
Me: Would you mind signing my training release?
G: Sure. (scribbles)
Me: It was ten releases ago.
G: That’s a lot of releases.

We had a question-and-answer period; my trainer Arnold Warren told us to make it interactive, so we had to think up of some questions to ask G.

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I asked him “the hardest question” (4:07)

And then he wanted to dance with us a little. Once the music started playing, we just went wild, and we just lost ourselves in the experience.

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dance, dance like it’s the last, last night of your life

That wasn’t the end of it. The next night, we had arranged for a big event, called “G Live: The BODYJAM Main Event”. People could buy tickets to enter what we had billed as a two-and-a-half hour dance workout, led by G. He taught the upcoming release, BODYJAM 54, plus something he billed as “55” but was actually a freestyle routine. Fan-freaking-tastic.

kicking it

dancing up a storm

hit it!

There was a part of me that had gone to sleep and had just been going through the motions. It took an encounter with G, someone who lives a really creative life bringing BODYJAM to life, to wake me up again. The time he spent with us told us that we do matter, we do make a difference, we have something to be proud of. It was something I badly needed, and since then I’ve been supercharged.

The Philippines loves you, G. Come back soon!

Last week was pretty crazy, what with the corporate seven-day fast at my church, practice sessions for BODYJAM at the gym, and a taping for ShopTV Live. There was one unexpected racket that I received during that week: to host the Voters Education gig at SaGuijo organized by Soniclogo.tv. It featured indie bands such as Drip, Techy Romantics, Wagyu, and Beatbox Philippines as well as a demonstration of the PCOS machine by Gaye Cabalo of Smartmatic.

(PCOS stands for Precinct Count Optical Scan. It can also mean Poly-Cystic Ovarian Syndrome, but you can’t use that to vote with, right?)

The event was sponsored by BagongBotante.ph, IbaNaNgayon.ph, Smartmatic, and COMELEC. It was basically a way to bring awareness of the new way to vote. Check out the websites to find out more.

Azrael was there to cover the event, and he took these great photos of me while hosting:

with Ms. Gaye showing the new ballot design

Paul hired me

I was brought in nearly at the last minute because the original host had to rush someone to the hospital. So I braved the maze-like streets of Makati, ignored the SaGuijo mosquitoes, and pretty much had a great time listening to the bands play from 9:30pm to 3:30am.

Hopefully I get to host more events. Loved loved loved it!

Tags: Voters Education, Event Host

Last November 14, I joined the Headshot Clinic Project OneYouth shoot sponsored by Globe Tattoo at Cava! in Somerset Hotel, Makati. So I trooped there, was handed a number and a release form (pretty much signing away my rights to use of my face from that shoot), and waited for Niccolo Cosme of Project Headshot Clinic to finish setting up.

We had to decide what advocacy to support: poverty eradication, improvement of education, gender equality and women’s rights, maternal and child welfare, combating communicable diseases, and environmental sustainability. Our advocacies would appear in our headshots. I chose Education because I believe a lot of problems in society are caused by ignorance, lack of ability for independent and analytical thought, and improper civic socialization — all of which can be remedied by proper education.

It was a very simple shoot, with a painted backdrop, one or two light sources, and a bounce board. From what I understand, Niccolo post-processes Headshot Clinic photos a certain way to give them a hyper-real look. He’s already done many other ones, like the One World series which featured my friend Luke, and most recently and prominently UNAIDS MOVE for AIDS awareness, which our very own YogaJane was part of.

We were told that we would be emailed a download link to our photos during the December 2009 launch of the Youth Vote online forums. We were asked to upload our headshots immediately to our social media accounts so that people would be pointed toward the forums. The forums would facilitate discussion leading to the creation of the OneYouth Manifesto, containing the advocacies supported by the youth to be presented to future leaders. It was a very noble cause indeed.

photo by Niccolo Cosme

The photos turned out great, and the shoot was a success. Niccolo was very easy to please and I was done in less than two minutes. I met the lovely Hannah (of Flaircandy.com) there, and she has one of the most beautiful photos from the set, which you can view at the Globe Tattoo website.

The only failing? Lack of follow-through and coordination among the agencies involved. When December rolled around, the Youth Vote forums still hadn’t been launched, our photos hadn’t been uploaded, and Headshot Clinic was busy promoting MOVE. I was finally able to download a low-res version of my photo when the Tattoo website finally updated with our photos on December 15.

Last week, the Globe OneYouth team sent me an email:

Dear OneYouth Ambassador,

Good day!

We have just uploaded your OneYouth Headshot photo online. Your photo contains the advocacy that you support, along with other information about you. Your photo is now free for you to download at the Globe Tattoo site.

To grab your photo from the OneYouth gallery, follow these steps:

• Log in to the Globe Tattoo site with your username and password
• Visit the OneYouth gallery
• Click on “View All” button on the right-hand side of the site.
• Type your name on the search box.
• Grab your widget at the Flash pop-up.

Thank you for your support of OneYouth, and we hope you enjoy your photos. See you guys soon!

Even here I encountered a road block. The website requires a valid email address to release my widget, but won’t accept the email address I supplied them with (which was the email address they sent that message to). I can’t even email the OneYouth team to ask for help, because they sent their email from a noreply address. I’m not even sure if there really is any effective discussion taking place on the Youth Philippines online forum, because the website is so darned hard to navigate.

I hate to come down on Globe like this, but this was a FAIL from my viewpoint. I’m writing this post now because I’m frustrated and I have no idea to whom to address my concerns. I mean, seriously, I signed away rights to my likeness from that shoot, only to have it misused this way? Hay nako…

Tags: Globe Tattoo, Headshot Clinic, OneYouth, Fail