I've never been really into the local music scene, and I feel a bit guilty for not supporting our own (yeah I know I've always been to Western/KPOP songs). Recently however, the winds are changing. I'm not really as active as before in terms of following kpop groups, and I just actually depended on what Spotify would pick up for me to discover new artists. Well the trend is leaning towards getting more local bands! 😊Maybe my taste is changing, but I'm really liking the songs that our local bands are creating!


Alpha Caeli
My favorite track: Intertwine
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Ang Bandang Shirley
My favorite track: Siberia
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Autotelic
My favorite track: Gising
P.S.They are the band I was given the privilege to shoot on a photography workshop!
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Ben&Ben
My favorite track: Kathang Isip
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Brisom
My favorite track: Balewala
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Caleb Santos
My favorite track: Forever
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Coeli
My favorite track: Puno
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Elle Sebastian
My favorite track: Bahaghari
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Munimuni
My favorite track: Tahanan
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Reese Lansangan
My favorite track: Autopilot
Official Site | Facebook | Youtube | Twitter | Instagram







Sud
My favorite track: Smilky
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Go check their music!  OPM is not dead. OPM lives on.

We're back with another installment of our weekly new music post! In case you've missed it, I'm starting this post series to catch up with new music from artists I'm interested in/caught my attention.

For the last week of March, here are the songs that caught my ears from the New Music Friday playlists on Spotify:










Puno
Coeli, Clara Benin
Our OPM entry for this week is this track with such relaxing guitar tunes at the intro. When the vocals came in, I knew this is the song to pick for the week. We have a lot of young talents today, and one of them is Coeli (pronounced as 'chê-li'). I'm wondering why she isn't already a household name. Her voice is so relaxing to listen to! Here's one of her live performance of this track. I already like her. I hope her music reaches more people.


I've placed the New Song Picks playlist at the sidebar, which I will be updating weekly for fresh music discoveries!

Several huge artists will be holding concerts in Manila next month and I am so excited. Even though I won't be coming to any of them (my next slated concert is still in May), I am hyped to know that these artists will be able to meet their Filipino fans! Here's a round up of names that will be performing in the month of April (this includes local acts that I am interested in):









Which concert are you most looking forward to? 😀

After our leisurely walk in Seoul Forest, I nudged my friends to stop by Hangang park, for an ultimate mission: to bike along the Hangang river!

Uh, where are all the people?

Upon arrival, I noticed something was off. Where are all the people? I was expecting there would be a lot of people just strolling around the park. Maybe because it was too cold? Anyway, I searched for the bike rentals because I really want to start biking! Based on my research, it was near a fountain. I asked the lady in the counter for rental bikes. She just pointed me to a sign posted at the door. I didn't notice that when I entered. To my dismay, it said that bike rental companies were currently holding a strike! 😭 Of all the days, right? Well I couldn't really do anything about it, so I just asked my friends to stroll a bit about around the park and take pictures.





Street Food and Makeup @ Myeongdong
Since we don't have anything to do for the rest of the evening, we headed to Myeongdong, my favorite place in Seoul! It served as my home during my first trip in South Korea so it really had a special place in my heart. 😊

Seeing the busy streets again of Myeongdong, I realized that I really missed Seoul.





My friends wanted to eat more street food while I wanted to look around at the (makeup!) shops. I have a list of items to buy for my colleagues so I was sure I will do a lot of moving around in between stores. Since both my friends are guys, I don't think they'd be thrilled. 😅 So to make the most out of our time, we decided to split ways and just return our separate ways to our hostel.

Once I started walking by myself in Myeongdong, my fangirl self got activated. I secretly squealed as I saw standees of familiar KPOP stars. I went on a high. This is KPOP heaven. 

I bought these makeup stuff for my colleagues back at home.

Since it was already getting late, I finished all the errands and went my way to the subway. It felt liberating to navigate solo, especially in a foreign land. I felt so free and happy. Is this a glimpse on how it feels to actually travel solo?  Since I was in my own room, I was able to do some me time for the rest of the night.

That wraps up day 2 of our trip! Stay tuned for more posts of our Korea adventure (which is already 2 years ago 😅 Bear with me, I will publish all of the content soon)!

I'm trying something new here. I got this lightbulb moment just today that I wanted to do more of this on the blog because I'm obsessed with being on the know on the latest music released by artists I follow, and also by new artists that are out there for me to discover. Every week, I'll be collating fresh tracks from artists I care about, courtesy of Spotify, with the songs curated for me via the New Music Friday and New Release Radar playlists.

One of my goals in Q3 2017 was to organize an event/activity for our team. I set this goal for myself because I know this will help me build soft skills that I want to strengthen for myself. And so the activity that I have chosen is - go hiking at the Masungi Georeserve.

• disseminated the information to our team
• got the headcount of who wanted to participated; collected their payments
• coordinated with the Masungi Reserve management
• reserved a van for our transportation, and 
• arranged a place to dine after our hike

It was one of the most stressful two months of my life (😅joke, just exaggerating a little). I single-handedly executed the tasks listed above. I had to learn some lessons the hard way, but that's okay since I believe this is the best method to learn stuff in life.

Hiking Day!
Because the location was a few hours away from the city, we had to start our journey earlier in the day. Thanks to Waze, I was able to calculate the appropriate time to depart our meetup location to be on time on our reservation slot in the reserve. We actually arrived there several minutes earlier than our schedule, so we stayed a few minutes in our van. A staff of Masungi then informed us that we can now enter the grounds and arrange the start of our trail.



Most of the surroundings of the reserve were covered with limestones. Our guide told us this is because the whole reserve was once underwater hundreds of years ago. It was so amazing to learn that.

Their comfort rooms are so beautiful. 😍

They even have potable water that has undergone natural filtration. Thanks to nature!

The whole hike lasted for around ~4 hours. There were several stops along the way wherein we spent sitting and drinking some water. All of the trails have stairs-like steps (unlike those in mountains) so it was an easy hike. Your only enemy is your endurance.


By the way, our group started at around 11AM. I was anxious that it would be hot that day because it was nearing noon (I've been checking Accuweather for weeks before this trip) but thankfully the weather was just right. It was cloudy, with a little bit of drizzle (the weather prediction was accurate! That's Accuweather indeed! 😎). In one part of the trail, we saw a snake. It was my first time to see one that close! It was tiny but long. Our guide told us it was sensitive to sound, so we have to make our steps very light and silent. We waited for the snake to crawl further from the trail before we proceeded our hike.

Our whole group happily hiking Masungi. (📷: Mark H.)

The steps along the trails are easy, but I would warn you on one thing: some parts involve climbing down (almost 90 degrees) on ropes. So if you are afraid of heights, brace yourself for this challenge!  I am confident you'll do fine as there are nets at the bottom so you won't really fall onto the rocks, if that's what you are worried about. 😅 Climbing down the ropes was my favorite part of the trail, actually.

I was the first one to climb down this rope trail. The first few seconds were frightening, but as I continuously stepped down, the fear was changed to adrenaline rush.

The infamous web. Can you spot the spider?

After several minutes, we left the reserve and headed down to a restaurant where we booked our lunch: Park, Rest, and Dine. Before our visit, we've already preordered the dishes we wanted so when we arrived there, they served our food within minutes. The owner of the restaurant was very kind and warm. I recommend you to stop by this place after your tiring hike at Masungi!

Perfect place to eat after the hike! 😋

I'm very glad things went well for this trip. We created happy memories with our colleagues. Hard work really pays off. 😂

Thank you friends for the support.
Cheers to the first group activity I've solely organized!!! 🎉🎉🎉

~o~
Masungi Georeserve | Official Site
Park, Rest & Dine | Facebook